A few weeks ago thousands of snake emoji from Taylor Swift’s Instagram post were removed leading people to believe that Instagram implemented a comment tracker. Their speculations were correct as Instagram recently announced its comment filter.
This tracker is added to the suite of privacy features Instagram already has implemented, including blocking accounts, reporting content, and keeping a private profile. The goal behind the post is to keep the platform positive and let users monitor the types of comments their page receives.
To access the feature, you need to go to your settings, “comments,” and then toggle on “hide inappropriate comments.” Instagram has a pre-selected set of offensive words and users can also customize a list of words they do not want to see on the page. Emojis can be blocked. There is no need to input a hashtagged word in, as any word added to the customized list will block hashtags of the same word.
Instagram has not released the list of words they marked as inappropriate for fear of offenders going around the filter. The user that posted an inappropriate comment will be able to see it, but it will be blocked before it gets to you.
Don’t worry if you enjoy using colorful language with friends, the platform does not block comments if you keep the filter turned off. As of right now, the filter is only available for comments directly on an Instagram post. It is not available in direct messaging, in response to a story, or in languages that do not have spaces between words.
Accounts with a large amount of followers have the option to turn off comments entirely. However, that feature is not available for every Instagram user.
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