Not all those who follow you on Instagram are your fans. Some maybe your competitor, some may even hate you. Most of these followers remain dormant till they get a chance to get back at you through online bullying. They often leave uncouth comments on your posts, and you wouldn't happen to remove them until you login to your Instagram account the next time. Till then, those comments remain there for the whole world to see. Now, blocking them is not a viable option since it would lower your follower count.
To solve this age-old issue for their influencers, Instagram has started rolling out a new "Restrict" mode.
This feature would let the Instagram users the ability to shadowban their cyberbullies who comments on photos with offensive or abusive language. Instagram, first started to roll out this feature for public testing in July.
As of now, this mode can be activated on specific Instagram accounts by swiping left on a comment, heading to your privacy settings, or doing so on the person's account. This feature would make those offensive "comments on your posts from a person you have restricted will only be visible to that person," according to a new Instagram blog post published today.
Since that person isn't blocked, people will still have the ability to see the comment by tapping on a message that appears, which is quite similar to how muted replies on Twitter look. Account owners will then have the ability to approve the comment so it's public to everyone, delete it, or ignore it. Instagram is also removing notifications on comments that come from a restricted account, which is also similar to Twitter's existing mute system.
Restricting someone's ability to comment will also affect their direct messages. Any attempt to send a direct message will move to a message request, according to Instagram, and notifications won't be sent. The message can still be read, but restricted accounts won't be notified when it’s read or when the person who has restricted them is active on Instagram.
In their blog post, Instagram wrote that they "...are committed to leading the industry in the fight against online bullying and will continue to build on that commitment long term. We look forward to sharing more updates soon."
