Instagram Grows to 800M Users Amid Continued Focus on Safety and Comment Moderation

[MacRumors]

Instagram has grown from 700 million total users in April 2017 to 800 million, as confirmed by parent company Facebook during an event in New York City this week (via CNBC). Of those 800 million total users, 500 million are opening the app and using it every day, compared favorably to Snapchat's 173 million DAUs that the Instagram rival reported earlier in August.

As it celebrates this milestone, Instagram today announced a few new community-focused comment moderation features rolling out to public and private accounts, building upon the "safer and kinder" message that's been the focus of Instagram updates over the past year. Now, whether your account is public or private, you'll be able to block any other account from commenting on your posts.

For public-only accounts, you'll have more granular options for choosing who can comment on your post: everyone, people you follow and your followers, people you follow, or just your followers. The company is also expanding languages that support its filter to block certain offensive comments -- in addition to English there will be support for Arabic, French, German, and Portugese.

A post shared by Instagram (@instagram) on Sep 26, 2017 at 6:05am PDT​

Other safety-centric additions include anonymously providing mental health resources to someone on an Instagram live broadcast, and a new #KindComments campaign that includes real-life murals in various cities around the world, along with new stickers available in the app. The company has accumulated all of these features and messages into a website called Instagram Together.

Article Link: Instagram Grows to 800M Users Amid Continued Focus on Safety and Comment Moderation

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Crushing Snapchat.

 

[Christian 5G]

But how many bots on instagram? If people are able to buy pretty much as many as they want now a days...

 

[macTW]

Philosophical question: is it the role of the content provider or platform provider to censor and moderate both content and responses to content?

Personally I vote platform provider moderate content and content provider moderate responses. But this is becoming a bigger and bigger issue nobody debates.

 

[fairuz]

Philosophical question: is it the role of the content provider or platform provider to censor and moderate both content and responses to content?

Personally I vote platform provider moderate content and content provider moderate responses. But this is becoming a bigger and bigger issue nobody debates.

On MR, there's usually a lot of people debating it on articles mentioning censorship. I say go to something like 4chan if you want less moderation. All Instagram cares about is getting more users and making money, so if they think users will prefer the censorship keeping the experience clean (as I would), they'll do it, simple as that.

 

[v0lume4]

My favorite platform. So thankful that Facebook hasn't destroyed it yet, like they've destroyed the Facebook app. Although, one questionable change that I wish would be reversed is the algorithmic feed. Posts should show up in the order that they were posted -- why am I seeing posts from two days ago? I don't even see posts from some of the users I follow anymore.

Hoping the censorship stuff doesn't go overboard in the future.

 

[CPx]

On MR, there's usually a lot of people debating it on articles mentioning censorship. I say go to something like 4chan if you want less moderation. All Instagram cares about is getting more users and making money, so if they think users will prefer the censorship keeping the experience clean (as I would), they'll do it, simple as that.

Yeah these companies can't keep passing the buck to the consumers. They keep wanting to say it's up to the consumers to be nice, to not spread fake news, to report bad behavior, etc etc. We've seen over and over it doesn't work. It's time for FB, IG, etc. to step up.

 

[miknos]

Best place for prostitutes to advertise!

 

[0098386]

It's a shame comments have to be moderated. I wish people would just behave these days.

 

[miniyou64]

Look at all the people in favor of censorship. Sad!