Facebook Inc. - the company that manages both Facebook and Instagram - announced this week the arrival of a new tool that will allow users of the social network to prevent receiving messages in Direct Message (DM) containing swearing, insults or abusive content. Filtering will be performed using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and messages will be stored in a separate section and will not be displayed in the common area of contact requests.
The company has been working hard to make Facebook and Instagram safe for everyone and to prevent comments that are prejudiced, homophobic or contain any kind of personal attack.
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Instagram against offenses
Instagram announced this week that it will automatically filter messages sent through Direct to prevent offensive content in users' chats. The novelty will not be available to everyone, arriving first only for celebrities and verified profiles on the social network. The platform will allow users to enable or disable message request filtering in a new section called 'Hidden Words' where messages containing the keyword determined by the user will be stored.
In addition to this, there are also other functions to reduce the amount of messages containing hate speech in the comments of publications by blocking swearing and offensive terms using AI or manually.
- Open the Instagram app and go to your profile, then access the side menu and tap on the 'Settings' option;
- Go to the 'Privacy' option and look for the 'Comments' tab;
- Under 'Filters' enable the option to 'Hide offensive comments'.
The functionality will be rolled out in the coming weeks in several countries, although there is still no official list released by the company. It is likely that the new feature will first arrive on Android for those enrolled in the beta testers program and then appear in the stable version.
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Measure against fake news
The social network also added new features that aim to prevent the spread of fake news about the new Coronavirus (Covid-19), even deleting publications that disclose treatments without scientific evidence.
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