Instagram is making some changes to improve the user experience on its service. Social media in general can bring about some great conversations, but there are always those who like to ruin good things. So, the Facebook-owned company is adding some new tools and controls to help users feel safer and to keep the platform a place for self-expression.

The biggest change is that comments can be disabled on posts. While this feature is not new to the Internet by any means, it is good to see Instagram acknowledging that comments are just not needed sometimes. Disabling them has been available only to select accounts, but it will roll out to everyone in the coming weeks. This feature is accessed by going into "Advanced Settings" before posting. Comments can also be re-enabled via the menu button on each photo.

The second new control is the ability to remove followers from a private account. As some of you may know, private accounts are restricted to other users until the owner approves a follow request. Until this point, if you did not want a particular approved person to see your stuff anymore, you had to block said person. Now, Instagram will let you remove those people and they won't know about it... until they stop seeing your posts. Still, I like where this is going.

Finally, there is now a way to report suspicion of self-harm. People can anonymously report any fears of their friends committing injury to themselves. From there, Instagram will connect the at-risk persons to the appropriate organization. The company says it will take these reports very seriously with a 24/7 team to review anything that comes in.

Overall, these new initiatives seem pretty good. We will have to see how they work out in practice.

Source: Instagram blog