Instagram is rolling out a feature that will urge users to think twice before posting hateful comments, in an effort to minimize cyberbullying on the massive social media platform.
The new feature uses artificial intelligence to screen content and notify users if their post may be harmful or offensive. Users will see a message: "Are you sure you want to post this?" They will then have the option to remove or change the comment before anyone else is able to see it.
Early tests of this feature found that some users are less likely to post harmful comments once they've had a chance to reflect on their post, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri wrote in a blog post.
Gmail has a similar feature that gives users 30 seconds to cancel an email after pressing send.
Other social media platforms have made attempts to monitor the type of content allowed on their platforms.
Twitter has started to flag hateful or offensive tweets from politicians, and on Tuesday announced it will now prohibit hate speech targeting religious groups by using dehumanizing language, a ban it says may extend to other categories like race and gender. Facebook has banned some white supremacists and other accounts for hateful or offensive posts. But there is no hard-and-fast rule for what these platforms are expected to restrict.
Monitoring harmful content on social media is challenging. Justin Patchin, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, says he works with different platforms that are trying to find a solution to this problem.
With massive amounts of content being created every second, Instagram is just one of the companies attempting to use AI to monitor posts. Both Facebook and Twitter have tried to use the technology in the past. But AI monitoring comes with challenges, and the algorithms often have a hard time interpreting slang and the nuances in different languages.
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