Instagram, the popular social media platform, faces the same problems of any other social media site, including its own parent company Facebook. While the battle against misinformation and online bullying continues to haunt social media companies, Instagram is taking some vigorous steps to keep its platform clean.
Instagram is now policing captions that users put with their photos and videos to make sure they do not offend anyone. In addition, the Facebook-owned photo and video-sharing platform is expanding its fact-checking program to curb the spread of misinformation.
Watch your language
Instagram wants you to have a decent and appropriate language, especially if your words can offend anyone on the platform. The company is fighting against the nuisance of bullying with the help of AI to remind people that their caption might offend someone.
Instagram had this feature enabled only for the comments section, but it now wants to make captions non-offensive. By giving a reminder to people that the caption might be offensive, Instagram wants its users to be careful before sharing posts.
"When someone writes a caption for a feed post and our AI detects the captions potentially offensive, they will receive a prompt informing them that their caption is similar to those reported for bullying. They will have the opportunity to edit their caption before it's posted," Instagram noted in a blog post on Monday.
Curb misinformation
Instagram, like any social media platform or internet company, is boosting its efforts to curb misinformation, which has caused a nuisance for consumers. The company had been working with a team of third-party fact-checkers in the US since May this year to identify, review and label false information.
Now, Instagram wants to take this approach on a global scale and finally put an end to spread of fake news. Instagram is working with fact-checking organisations around the world to review content on the platform. When content is rated false or partly false, Instagram will reduce its distribution and label it accordingly so users are well aware of what they are watching.
In addition, if anything is rated false or partly false on Facebook, Instagram will label identical content if it is posted on its platform and vice versa.
"The label will link out to the rating from the fact-checker and provide links to articles from credible sources that debunk the claim(s) made in the post. We make content from accounts that repeatedly receive these labels harder to find by removing it from Explore and hashtag pages," Instagram noted in a separate blog on Monday.
