Instagram has just announced that it is toughening its stance on hate speech and will now disable accounts that send hateful DM’s.
At the start of 2021, Instagram updated its Terms of Use, and it didn’t go down well amongst users. People claimed that the new rules violated their privacy on the app, and Madonna even shared her opinion on the new policy.
Now, Instagram has just changed some of its rules again, but these changes have had a much better reaction from users. The app is now cracking down on hate speech in DM’s in a bid to remove abusive behavior.
Instagram will now disable accounts that use hate speech in DM’s
In an online statement posted on Wednesday (February 10th) titled “an update on our work to tackle abuse on Instagram”, the app outlined its new rules regarding hate speech.
“Today, we’re announcing that we’ll take tougher action when we become aware of people breaking our rules in DMs,” Instagram said.
They revealed that people who use hate speech in direct messages will now have their accounts disabled.
“Now, if someone continues to send violating messages, we’ll disable their account. We’ll also disable new accounts created to get around our messaging restrictions, and will continue to disable accounts we find that are created purely to send abusive messages.”
Before the policy change, if someone sent hate speech in DM’s, Instagram would stop them from sending messages for a set period of time. Now, they risk having their account deleted completely.
Instagram also revealed that between July and September 2020, the app took action on 6.5 million pieces of hate speech, including in DMs, 95% of which was found before anyone reported it.
What is hate speech?
So what is actually regarded as hate speech? Well, by definition, the United Nations describes hate speech as:
“Any kind of communication in speech, writing or behaviour, that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, colour, descent, gender or other identity factor.”
What is considered ‘hate speech’ is often controversial and disputed, but generally it is any form of verbal or written discrimination against a certain person or group.
Any such language found in Instagram DM’s will now result in an account being disabled.
Other new hate speech policies
Disabling accounts that use hate speech in DM’s isn’t the only thing Instagram is doing to tackle the problem.
In the statement, they also revealed that they have introduced the option for Creator and Business accounts to switch off DM’s from people they don’t know, as they are often the ones who receive the most hate.
They said that they’re also rolling out these controls on Personal accounts in many countries and “hope to make them available to everyone soon”.