Instagram Reporting Option Expands to Spot Misinformation

As another move to reduce the prevalence of misinformation on social media, Facebook is expanding the Instagram reporting option to spot fake news and contents.

Since 2016 and after the presidential election of the United States of America, Facebook has made many efforts to turn the social media into a more authentic and reliable space for people to reply on. One of their latest endeavors is enabling users to report misinformation on Instagram.

The option is now added to Instagram in the test pool. Therefore, only the beta users of the platform can see and experience the change, currently. If rolled out globally, Instagram reporting option will include a “false information” label added to it. Instagrammers can use the tag to report posts and contents if they are positive that the news is a false one.

How to use Instagram reporting option to tell on misinformation?

You probably know how to report a post on Instagram. All you need to do is to tap on the three vertical dots on the top right of a photo or video posted on Instagram, and you will have some options. Select “False Information,” and you are done. However, the post won’t be taken action on right away after you report it. Instagram will check it, and if agreed on its falsehood, the feed will be eliminated from hashtag search and Instagram explore sections of the platform, all together.

As per Instagram:

“From the end of August, people will be able to let us know about content that people believe may be misinformation and help improve our ability to proactively catch misinformation. When we find misinformation on Instagram, we filter it from places where people discover new content – Explore and hashtag pages.”

Inauthentic activity on Instagram is also under detection

Another action taken by Instagram towards securing the platform (aside from the expansion of Instagram reporting option), is to eliminate accounts that are running on Bot activity. During recent years, many Instagrammers have decided to use third-party automation apps to automate their Follow/Follow interaction on the platform. The method of F/F works, because when someone follows another user on Instagram, the other user will follow them back, hence a network of followers builds up.

Done mostly by robots during the few past years, F/F method has spread an air of fakeness and inauthenticity to all over the platform. Now you don’t know if it is a real person following you no. Instagram decided to spot and eliminate accounts using Bot activity for the sake of authenticity and realness of interaction on social media.

Of course, Instagram has spoken about it many years ago and it can’t release the activity is by robot or human, completely. There are some users that behave like a robot and follow others without any stop, and when they followed them, then he/she start to unfollow immediately. Instazood try to make its activity like a normal and real user base on filters and settings that has.

Final thoughts

Expanding Instagram reporting option to detect fake news and misinformation as well as removing unreal activities from the platform are two of the most significant moves Instagram has made in the course of 2019. This gives us another reason to be hopeful of the future of social media as tomorrow’s home to most of our professional and personal activities.