Instagram shields celebrity accounts from online bullies and trolls

Instagram is testing a new feature with celebrity accounts attempting to prevent bullying and abuse on their platform.

Taylor Swift has been recently targeted by online trolls when users took to the ‘green colored snake’ emoji to express their hatred and dismay.

The ongoing feud between Taylor Swift-Kanye West-Kim Kardashian began with the release of Kanye’s controversial music video which featured a Taylor Swift doppelganger and has been snowballing ever since.

This showdown has been playing out across the social media spectrum with devoted fans acting as social media infantry attacking either side.

Instagram allows users to delete comments and block internet trolls and bullies but celebrities who get thousands of comments find it difficult to find and eliminate undesirable comments. The photo sharing platform has decided to make things simpler for celebrities in times of social media peril.

The feature is only being tested with celebrity accounts who have a large volume of followers and blocks users from making comments that contain phrases which have previously been reported. Hence, all the snake emojis used by trolls on Taylor’s posts have been wiped out.

As usual, not all users are getting behind this perceived noble cause. Some have voiced concern that racist and hateful content is still visible on Instagram but Instagram is acting as celebrity savior by deleting comments for them.

Prior to this, Instagram used to rely on its blocking mechanism to flag hateful or harming content. The photo-sharing app however, has been accused of wrongly blocking provoking content umpteen times. How the new feature works out, will be indeed interested to see.