8 Ways to Make Your Instagram a Safer Space

No social media platform is secure from hate speech, trolls, and offensive comments. But you can make your own account a safer and a more comfortable place for yourself and your followers with these simple tips.

Let’s cut to the chase and reveal these eight tactics you can implement right away without making your Instagram account private.

Hide Comments & Messages Containing Certain Words

Any celebrity, influencer or creator at least once in their lifetime face offensive or insulting comments. Instagram rarely bans people for hate speech, but you can anticipate this intention and eradicate it beforehand. Here’s how.

1. Head over to Settings -> Privacy.
2. Find Hidden Words under the Interactions tab. Click on it.
3. Scroll down to Manage custom words and phrases.

4. Set words, phrases, or even emojis that you won’t allow on your profile.

5. Toggle Hide comments.

The same works for message requests: DM requests that contain offensive words and phrases will be moved to the hidden requests folder.

You can also turn on Advanced comments filtering to hide additional comments that contain offensive words. You can review and then unhide them.

Filter Who Can Comment on Your Posts

In the same Interactions tab -> Comments section, you can filter who can leave comments on your posts. It allows you to choose between these types to enable comments from:

• Everyone
• People you follow
• People who follow you
• Both your followers and users you follow.

You can also block comments from certain users. Go to the Block Comments From tab and start entering people’s usernames. They won’t be notified you’ve blocked them, and their comments won’t be visible to anyone but themselves.

💡Suggested read: How to Know If Someone Blocked You On Instagram

Approve Photo Tags

You can approve tags before they appear on your profile. You can do that in the Mentions tab within the Interactions section in Privacy. It allows you to manually approve who can tag you, who can’t, and the content you’re tagged in.

Hide Stories & Filter Replies to Them

If you want to hide a story from someone without adding them to the Close Friends list, you can do it in the Story section under the Interactions tab in Privacy.

Open Hide story and pick the users from the list or manually enter the username.

💡In the same tab, you can also control who can reply to your stories and control where they can be shared.

Filter Your Inbox DMs with Message Requests

Here you can manage which folder you receive a DM in and if you get them at all.

1. Go to Settings -> Privacy.
2. Scroll down to Messages.

Now you can turn the requests on so that anybody who messages you is approved.

Restrict Messaging from the Same Users with Different Accounts

When someone requests you in DM and you want to delete the message, you can hide new messages in this chat by automatically sending them to the hidden requests folder. Here’s how:

1. Pick the Delete button after you open the DM request.
2. Toggle on Hide New Message when this window pops up.

3. Press Delete.

Block a User with All Their Associated Accounts

Instagram now allows you not only to block a particular user but also all new accounts this user might create. This is super useful because it can protect you from stalkers who create multiple accounts just to bother you.

Here’s how you can do that. When someone tries to send you a DM message or comment on your content, open their profile and block them.

Then the following window will open:

Choose Block @username and new accounts they may create. Press Block.

Hide Likes & Views Counts

Instagram started hiding likes count under accounts back in 2019. But now, you can manually hide it if you think people can see the likes and view count under your photo and video posts. Here’s how:

1. Go to Settings -> Privacy -> Posts.
2. Find Hide Likes and View Counts and switch it on.

Easy!

Hope we helped you to make your Instagram account a safer space both for yourself and your followers.