Instagram Introduces Bulk Comment Delete, Tag And Mention Control, And Kills Of Its Lite App

Instagram

Change is a must when dealing with the ever-changing demand of users and the market.

To keep up with the trends, Instagram is changing some things to make its platform a better place. The most notable would be the ability to control who can tag or mention users in comments, captions and Stories, as well as the ability to delete comments in bulk.

In a blog post, Instagram said that the updates are meant to help it "fight online bullying."

The move follows Facebook’s release of its May 2020 Community Standards Enforcement Report.

"Today, we’re sharing the fifth edition of our Community Standards Enforcement report which tracks our progress to keep Facebook and Instagram safe. In addition to this report, we’re announcing new features that mark the continuation of our effort to lead the industry in the fight against online bullying."
Instagram bulk comment delete

First up, is Instagram allowing users to delete comments in bulk.

If users think that the comments they receive on their post contain bullying, harassment or other kind of negative interactions, they can easily remove them with only a few steps

To do this, users need to tap on a comment, to then tap on the dotted icon located in the top-right corner to select the 'Manage Comments' option. Here, they can choose up to 25 comments to delete at once. There is also the 'More Options' where users can block or restrict accounts in bulk.

Second, is an anti-bullying feature Instagram, where users are given the option to control who can mention or tag them in a post.

Instagram tag and mention control

With the option, users can set the choice to simply “Everyone,” or “Only People You Follow,” or “No One”.

"We’ve seen that tags and mentions can be used to target or bully others, so we’re rolling out new controls that allow you to manage who can tag or mention you on Instagram. You can choose whether you want everyone, only people you follow or no one to be able to tag or mention you in a comment, caption or Story," said Instagram.

On Facebook's May 2020 Community Standards Enforcement Report, the company goes on by saying that:

"On Instagram, we made improvements to our text and image matching technology to help us find more suicide and self-injury content. As a result, we increased the amount of content we took action on by 40% and increased our proactive detection rate by more than 12 points since the last report."

"We also made progress in our work combating online bullying by introducing several new features to help people manage their experience and limit unwanted interactions, and we announced new Instagram controls today. We are sharing enforcement data for bullying on Instagram for the first time in this report, including taking action on 1.5 million pieces of content in both Q4 2019 and Q1 2020."

Instagram Lite not supported

In another story, Instagram has shut down its Lite app, which was meant for users with entry-level, low-powered smartphones.

The Instagram Lite app is a scaled down regular Instagram, which focused on reduced memory consumption and low-data connectivity speeds. First launched in 2018, Instagram Lite app was just 573KB, or about a full 1/55 of the full version at the time.

Android Police reported that the Lite app has been unpublished from the Google Play Store on April 12.

In the meantime, Instagram users with budget phones may rather use Instagram on the web by firing up their phone's web browser, if for any reason Instagram's main app fails to perform well on their phones.

In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed the rollback of the app:

"We are rolling back the test of the Instagram Lite app. You can start using the latest version of Instagram instead to connect with the people and things you love."
Published: 
13/05/2020