Instagram announces tougher consequences for hate speech in direct messages

Instagram is toughening its stance on hate speech in direct messages. The company announced today that it’ll start disabling the accounts of people who repeatedly send hateful messages. First-time offenders won’t be able to send messages for an undefined period of time, but if they send hateful messages again, their account will be disabled.

“We’ll also disable new accounts created to get around our messaging restrictions, and will continue to disable accounts we find that are created purely to send abusive messages,” an Instagram blog post states.

Instagram’s hate speech policy bans attacks on people based on protected characteristics, including race or religion, as well as “more implicit forms of hate speech,” like content depicting...

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