Instagram now lets you limit comments and DM requests

Next, Instagram will now show stronger warnings when someone tries to post a potentially offensive comment rather than waiting for the second or third comment and warning them that their comment may be removed or hide if they proceed.

Instagram is rolling out a couple of new features including the ability to limit comments and DM requests to help protect people from abuse on the platform.

The Facebook-owned photo and video sharing platform has introduced a new feature called Limits that allows you to limit comments and DM requests during spikes of increased attention. When turned on, it automatically hides comments and DM requests from people who don't follow you, or who only recently followed you.

"Limits allows you to hear from your long-standing followers while limiting contact from people who might only be coming to your account to target you. We're also exploring ways to detect when you may be experiencing a spike in comments and DMs so that we can prompt you to turn on Limits," the company wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.

Starting today, Limits will be available to everyone on Instagram globally. To turn the feature on, go to your Privacy settings > Interactions > Limits.

Next, Instagram will now show stronger warnings when someone tries to post a potentially offensive comment rather than waiting for the second or third comment and warning them that their comment may be removed or hide if they proceed.

Thirdly, the Hidden Words feature which allows you to automatically filter offensive words, phrases and emojis into a Hidden Folder, is expanding globally. It will be available for everyone by the end of this month. Additionally, Instagram has expanded the list of potentially offensive words, hashtags and emojis that it automatically filters out of comments.

"We hope these new features will better protect people from seeing abusive content, whether it's racist, sexist, homophobic or any other type of abuse. We know there's more to do, including improving our systems to find and remove abusive content more quickly and holding those who post it accountable," Instagram said.