Instagram has expanded its efforts to prevent bullying, harassment, and nastiness from appearing on its platform. The latest target being the captions that accompany Instagram photos. The idea is to help you think twice before posting offensive captions.

Instagram Tries to Combat Bullying

In July 2019, Instagram rolled out new tools designed to combat bullying on its platform. The first is called Restrict, which allows you to restrict how much someone can interact with you on Instagram. Restrict became available to everyone in October 2019.

The second was an AI-driven effort to detect harmful comments before they were posted. With the person about to post said comment asked to consider whether they should actually post it. And now that same technology is being expanded to include captions.

Instagram Tackles Offensive Captions

Instagram explains the idea on the Instagram Blog. The company states that its new feature "notifies people when their captions on a photo or video may be considered offensive, and gives them a chance to pause and reconsider their words before posting."

So, from now on, when you write a caption for a feed post, Instagram will check its potential to cause offense. And if Instagram's AI thinks that your caption is likely to cause offense, you'll be given the opportunity to edit it before posting.

This is all thanks to machine learning, with Instagram's AI looking for captions "similar to others that have been reported". So you can help make Instagram better by reporting captions, comments, posts, and users who are bringing toxicity to the platform.

The Best Instagram Alternatives to Try

This feature will initially be rolled out "in select countries" before "expanding globally in the coming months". However, even without Instagram detecting potentially offensive captions you should be able to stop yourself from posting anything offensive.

These efforts to combat bullying are very welcome, and overdue for anyone who has been bullied on Instagram. However, Instagram isn't for everyone, so if you're looking for a similar app, here are the best Instagram alternatives for smartphone photographers.