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03 October 2019Instagram wants to do more to prevent bullying and allow victims to defend themselves.

And it announces two new features to meet both needs. These tools are based on a deep understanding of the behavior of bullies and the reactions they generate on the platform, but they are only two steps of a longer path.

Encourage positive interactions
Online bullying is a complex issue. For years now, Instagram has been using artificial intelligence to detect bullying and other types of malicious content in comments, photos and videos.

Adolescents are the most reluctant to report online bullying even when they are the main victims. This is why in the last few days, Instagram has begun testing a new AI-based feature that notifies people when their comment can be considered offensive before it is published. This intervention gives people the opportunity to reflect and cancel their comment and prevents the recipient from receiving notification of the comment.

From the first tests performed on this feature, it was discovered that it encourages some people to cancel their comment and share something less offensive

Protect the account with Silenzia
It also emerged that the young people of the community are reluctant to block, reveal or report bullying because this could aggravate the situation, especially if they interact with the author in real life.

Soon Instagram will start testing a new way to protect accounts from unwanted interactions called Silenzia . Once a user reports someone, the comments on that person's posts will be visible only to that person. You can choose to make the comments of a silenced person visible to others by approving the comments. The silenced person will not be able to see when the user is active on Instagram or when he has read his direct messages.