Reuters) – Instagram, the photo-sharing app owned by Facebook Inc <FB.O> on Monday launched a keyword moderation tool to allow its users to control the comments posted on their pictures.
The feature allows its users to list words that they consider offensive or inappropriate and then comments with those words would be hidden from the user’s posts.
Abusive comments and online trolling seen on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter Inc have been garnering eyeballs as more celebrities deactivate their accounts as a result of the hate they receive online.
Recently Twitter permanently suspended a number of user accounts for harassment after the exit of Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones from the microblogging site as she faced severe abuse and harassment on the platform.
The new feature from Instagram comes almost a month after pop star Justin Beiber quit the site after threatening to make his account private due to the backlash he received on a picture he posted.
Instagram already allows its users to delete comments by swiping, reporting inappropriate comments and blocking accounts and now with the new tool users can either use their own curated list of inappropriate words or use the list of default words provided by Instagram to hide them from the comments.
(Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr)
Copyright 2016 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.
