Instagram Can Detect Bullying in Photos & This Is Huge for Teens

Just in time for National Bullying Prevention Month, the developers at Instagram have rolled out anti-bullying detection in Instagram photos. This is good news, considering that 59 percent of American teens say that they have been the victim of some form of cyberbullying, according to a Pew Research Center survey released last month.

While Instagram already had tools in place to detect and report bullying in comments, it was a lot harder to spot bullying in photos and captions. The social media platform now uses machine learning technology to target bullying comments both on photos and in captions and report them to human moderators. It has also extended its bullying comment filter to live videos as well.

Photo: Webster2703 via Pixabay

“There is no place for bullying on Instagram. As the new Head of Instagram, I’m proud to build on our commitment to making Instagram a kind and safe community for everyone,” Instagram’s new head Adam Mosseri wrote in his first company blog post to users.

In addition to the new anti-bullying tools, Instagram also rolled out a camera effect in Stories to help inspire kindness. Designed in partnership with best-selling teen author Maddie Ziegler, the new effect accessed at the bottom of the Stories mode fills the screen with hearts and asks users to “tag a friend to spread kindness.” They will then be notified that they received a tag in your Story and be prompted to spread kindness to someone else using the same effect.

On today’s story: we’re with @maddieziegler spreading kindness on Instagram — and rocking the new camera effect she helped work on. https://t.co/Cj8Xpnke3T pic.twitter.com/HH8ru1P0wv

— Instagram (@instagram) October 9, 2018

If you already follow Ziegler you will see the effect added, otherwise when you spot the effect being used by someone else, tap “try it” to add it to your own camera.

Instagram also recently launched new resources for parents to help keep their kids safe while using social mediawith new tools to manage things like privacy and usage.

—Shahrzad Warkentin

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