In Maybe This Is Potentially Good News, it looks like Instagram is going to help shoulder the barrage of cyberflashing women experience in direct message requests.
Instagram is trialing a feature that would limit users to sending text-only DM requests to someone who doesn't follow them, The Guardian first reported. The social media app's owner, Meta, announced in a blog post that if the user accepts the message request, then the requester can begin sending photos, videos, and more text messages. And before any of that happens, the requester has to send an invite to get their permission to request.
Currently, people can send unlimited DM requests and they can be text or images. This comes after research shows that trolls send loads of inappropriate, often abusive, photos to women all the time.
"In practice, this means people will no longer be able to receive unsolicited images or videos from people they don’t follow," Meta said in a statement to The Guardian.
While this trial is testing this feature for all Instagram users, Meta announced it along with a host of new features aimed to increase parental supervision on Instagram and Facebook Messenger. Meta said in a blog that these protections are "especially important when it comes to teens."
