Instagram to remove accounts who send abusive messages in DMs

Instagram has announced a new update on its anti-abuse efforts. Stating that the update was carried out recently due to racist attacks against some football players in the UK, Instagram announced that abuse in Instagram DM will now result in stricter penalties.

“We take action whenever we become aware of hate speech, and we’re continuously improving our detection tools so we can find it faster. Between July and September of last year, we took action on 6.5 million pieces of hate speech on Instagram, including in DMs, 95% of which we found before anyone reported it.”

Stating that hate speech, bullying or racism seen in DM conversations cannot be detected as easily and proactively as comments, because it is a private area where users communicate with each other, Instagram reported that users who violate the rules in DMs will now face stricter penalties.

Instagram accounts created just to DM others will be disabled 

According to the company statement, when a user sends messages that violate DM rules, the user will be banned from sending more messages for a certain period of time. In addition, if the user continues to send violating messages when the ban is lifted, their account will be permanently disabled. 

Instagram reported that new accounts created just for violating DM rules will also be directly disabled, and accounts created solely for abuse will be quickly detected and closed. 

In addition, Instagram stated that they are ready to cooperate with security forces in the UK on hate speech. “We’re also committed to cooperation with UK law enforcement authorities on hate speech and will respond to valid legal requests for information in these cases.”