Instagram has become a breeding ground for a lot of negativity as it’s grown and evolved. It’s something that Instagram have been working hard to try and eradicate from the platform. They’ve been demoting “inappropriate content”, removing fake engagement, and doing what they can to reduce online bullying.
But online bullies are using the inappropriate content crackdown to report peoples images that aren’t inappropriate at all. So much so that it’s become something of a problem. Users are having their images taken down, with apparently zero oversight and no recourse. Now, TechCrunch reports that Instagram is changing that by allowing users to appeal takedowns against their account.
It’s something that Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, has been doing for a while. I know many people who’ve had content removed over the years and then been able to appeal it and have the content reinstated, and we’ve covered some of those stories here on DIYP.
In the case of Facebook, sometimes it’s down to random people reporting your content and sometimes it’s down to an “AI Bot” spotting it and not being as intelligent as Facebook would have us believe. With Instagram, it seems to typically be user reported content, although some of it is likely automated.
Instagram’s head of policy, Karina Newton says that it lets users “get a second opinion on the post” and will restore its visibility if it was wrongly removed. The new appeal feature starts rolling out today and will come to all users over the next few months.
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