Brief:

The social media platform Instagram, owned and operated by Meta (formerly Facebook), has announced that it will begin censoring private and direct messages using the “Hidden Words” feature.

Background:

“Hidden Words” was introduced last year as an optional setting. Instagram creators could enable it, but the tool was not in wide use. Instagram announced Thursday that it will make “Hidden Words” the default setting, and that it has teamed up with “anti-discrimination” organizations who are compiling a list of censored terms for the platform.

In addition to the word-filtering tool, Instagram also plans to expand “nudges,” a system that warns users when they are about to reply to a message or a comment that the platform’s systems consider to be “offensive.”

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Meta (owner of Instagram) said, “Building a recommendation system across all these types of content is something we’re uniquely focused on.”