Mark Zuckerberg’s social network continues its war against bullying and online offenses: it will soon introduce new features to optimize the control of comments and tags
Mark Zuckerberg’s company, Facebook Inc. has published the new report on the application of Facebook and Instagram community standards. It is a very important document because it shows the improvements caused by the introduction of some standards, but above all it dictates what the plans are for the future.
The goal is to create a platform clear of offensive content, fake news, content that incites suicide, pornographic or otherwise that may cause discomfort in users. Among the various programmatic actions introduced by the new 2020 report stands out the possibility of mass removal of all negative comments directed at an account, specifically those that incite hatred and bullying. The victims of these negative and heavy comments are often the more or less important public figures and influencers, but ordinary users are also affected. Here’s the data from the report and the improvements that will be made to the company’s platforms.
Instagram: negative comments on the rise
According to the Community Standards Enforcement Report over the past 2 years, negative comments within the company’s social networks have increased by 8% for a total of 20% over the past year. Today, thanks to new technologies and algorithms, up to 90% of this content on Facebook can be removed before users themselves report it. The content removed on Facebook in the last four months of 2019 was more than 8 million.
With the help of artificial intelligence, it is now possible to detect any writing or messages inside photos. This makes it possible to intercept and block a lot of content that violates the standards, especially those that incite hatred, suicide and self-harm. Compared to the last report, this content has increased by 40%.
Finally, there are many initiatives by Instagram and Facebook that seek to combat bullying, an activity that especially affects those with many followers. The implementation of the new anti-bullying rules has led to action on more than 1.5 million pieces of content from October 2019 to March 2020. This content in recent months was intercepted mainly because it was photos and videos in which the person concerned was tagged. But now there is a step forward: it will soon intervene directly on the offensive comments.
Instagram and the fight against online bullying
As part of the report, some new features were announced that will allow to continue the “fight against bullying” on Instagram. The first feature will allow users themselves to manage multiple comments at once. Currently, account owners can only delete one comment at a time, but in the near future, they will be able to make mass interventions or select all profiles to be silenced at once.
Positive comments will be able to be pinned, i.e. highlighted, regardless of when they were posted. Finally, Instagram will introduce a new feature designed to avoid offensive tags: users will be able to custom manage these tags, deciding in advance who can tag them and who can’t. This option will include: none, all or just the accounts you follow. This will allow you to better control all the content related to a single account.
There is already the possibility to control tags on Instagram, but it is very difficult to manage if you are tagged daily in hundreds of photos: you have to authorize them one by one.