Negative posts will be displayed lower in Instagram Feed and Stories

Kaushal Thakkar is the Founder and MD of Infidigit. He has developed award-winning search strategies for various organizations, ranging from large enterprise and e-commerce websites to small and medium-sized businesses. Before Infidigit, he was leading digital marketing, product, and eCommerce initiatives at Myntra (a Walmart Company), Times Group, ICICI Group, Tata Group. Being an engineer and product manager in his earlier days, he loves to hack growth for websites via technical SEO strategies. He is a speaker at various forums and a Pro bono guest lecturer on Organic Search, Digital Marketing, Analytics & eCommerce. In X @

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Kaushal Thakkar

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Instagram will give less importance to content that may involve bullying or promote violence

Instagram has taken significant measures to reduce the promotion of toxic content on the platform’s Feed and Stories. The new update will give less importance to “Potentially Harmful Content”.

“In addition to removing content that goes against our Community Guidelines, we’re now taking stronger action against posts that may contain bullying or hate speech, or that may encourage violence, by showing them lower in Feed and Stories”, wrote Instagram.

Less prominence to accounts that share misinformation

Instagram has taken steps in the past to reduce or eliminate content that contains misleading information. The type of content that appears in Feed and Reels are determined by Instagram’s Recommendations Guidelines. Instagram employs technology (algorithms) to evaluate whether or not a piece of content complies with the Recommendations Guidelines.

Instagram’s Recommendations Guidelines include the following:

The content should not be structured around suicide, self-harm or any kind of eating disorders.
Content should not contain violence and fights.
The content should not be sexually explicit (people wearing see-through, nudity or any sexual activity).
The content should not contain use of drugs, smoking, vaping or any regulated products.
Content from a non-recommended account should not be shared

Instagram is also very stringent when it comes to Community Guidelines and removes posts that violate the guidelines. Instagram’s new update, which displays negative posts lower in the Feed and Stories, is another step in this direction.

What impact will this have on your Instagram Feed?

Currently, content is ranked on the Instagram Feed based on the algorithm that determines how likely you are to interact with the posts. This is based on thousands of “signals” including posts you liked, whether you watch more video content, type of content you consume, and your history of interactions with other people.

With the new change, Instagram will now also consider “how likely you are to report a post” as one of the signals. Instagram believes that this will help them de-prioritize negative posts that involve bullying or promote violence on Feed and Stories.

“Today we announced that we’re making posts that likely break our rules around hate speech, bullying, and the incitement of violence harder to come across on Feeds and Stories, as we continue to slow the spread of content that could be upsetting or harmful”, wrote Instagram Comms – the PR team for Instagram.

Today we announced that we're making posts that likely break our rules around hate speech, bullying, and the incitement of violence harder to come across on Feeds and Stories, as we continue to slow the spread of content that could be upsetting or harmful.https://t.co/Hy9RsCos7y

— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) January 20, 2022