I remember being a kid and using tumblr for the first time, realizing that this was somewhere I could just hide behind a screen and feel like my persona was protected. I wouldn’t have to worry about some discovering my identity. However, I learned the hard way that no matter who you are or how you display your online identity, there will always be one person who will try to put you down. This week, I learned that with the advancement of the internet, apps like Instagram are cracking down on new ways to prevent the spread of hate speech sent through direct messages, or private messaging according to Business Insiders India. Over the last couple of years, hate speech has become an explicit problem whether that be towards a group of people or between individuals. Instagram is attempting to shut down this behavior by monitoring messages between people to check for abusive and hateful behavior, and then disabling them. Although this has not completely discontinued hate speech from being excluded in whole, it is mitigating the behavior on their platform.
I also learned that learned that they’re are specific ways to alleviate some of the hate speech through DMs without directly involving Instagram’s team. Content creators and businesses can disable their direct messages or set them to only the people they follow in order to prevent unknown users from contacting them. This has helped control the spread of malicious activity. For me, I remember getting cyberbullied as a kid, and I remember how much it affected my mental health. I remember crying in my room because someone was making fun of me. Even though I didn’t know this person at all, they still sent hateful messages because they were able to without any consequences due to anonymity. I wish I knew what I know now. Today, I know that people are going to act how they want to and although it would be a better world if we could eliminate this anger, it will not be going away any time soon. My advice would to just ignore them. They don’t know who you really are, so why let it affect you? Also setting your profile on private will prevent unknown users from having access to you.
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