Instagram is working on some significant enhancements for the commenting feature found its mobile app, potentially giving users the ability to filter their own comment streams on the service or even disable commenting on all posts, according to The Washington Post. Instagram has been testing these features with some businesses, but soon everyone will be able to screen individual comments in their feed and decide for themselves if they might be better served by disabling commenting on their account altogether.
Instagram is taking these steps to deal with the complicated ethics of online commenting because “different words or phrases” are offensive to different people. Therefore, giving people the ability to weed out offensive comments on individual posts is seen as the next logical step for the popular mobile photo-sharing service.
“Our goal is to make Instagram a friendly, fun and, most importantly, safe place for self expression,” said Instagram’s head of public policy, Nicky Jackson Colaco.
Instagram has begun offering accounts with high volume comment threads the option to moderate their comment experience. “As we learn, we look forward to improving the comment experience for our broader community,” said Jackson.
High-profile accounts will get the feature first as it goes live in the coming weeks. All users will see changes to their comments in the coming months.
Instagram is a free download from the App Store.
Source: The Washington Post