As part of Instagram's fight against online bullying, the company is rolling out new features that are designed to make it easier for users to delete comments in bulk and control who are allowed to interact with them on the platform.
A significant change in the app's comment controls will now allow users to delete bulk comments at once, as well as restrict and block people from unwanted comments.
How the new feature works
Right now, users are only able to delete comments, and restrict and block users one at a time which is a very time-consuming task especially for those who have a lot of followers. Depending if you're an Android or iOS user, this new feature will work in two ways.
When you're on an Android device, users can access the new bulk delete feature by pressing and holding a specific comment, tapping on the dotted icon, and selecting restrict or block. On iOS, users will need to tap the comment, select the dotted icon in the top right corner, go to manage comments and from there, start deleting up to 25 comments in one go.
Instagram will also be granting users the ability to pin or highlight up to three comments at the top of their post and will automatically notify the person who wrote those pinned comments. The company hasn't started testing this new feature yet, but it did say that its intention is to help users control their accounts better.
A big 'No' to negative behavior
These new features are mentioned in Facebook's latest report on Community Standards Enforcement. It highlights what each Facebook-owned platform is doing to enforce policies that are related to negative behaviors such as fake accounts, hate speech, and bullying.
According to Gizmodo, "Instagram is rolling out a new tag management feature similar to Facebook's, but will also give users better control of their mentions. Currently, Instagram only gives you the option to toggle the option to manually approve tags on and off. If your profile is public, anyone can tag you in a photo or video-same with mentions in comments, captions, and stories. But the new feature will let you choose to allow tags and mentions from one of three categories: everyone, only people you follow, and no one."
Similar to content controls, it would seem that this feature will also be a huge time-saver since users won't have to go through every comment mention and tags on their post to see if they're okay with the content or not.
Users will be very pleased to know that Instagram has been putting effort into making heir platform friendlier for everyone.