In the application app Instagram, a new message can be seen in the inbox on the display of an iPhone SE. (Photo by Silas Stein/picture alliance via Getty Images) Direct messages are the mostly unseen side of social media.
They’re private, individualized and personal — and a new study found they’re also often filled with hate and abuse that goes unchecked.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) combed through thousands of direct messages sent on Instagram to women with high-profile accounts and found that not only did Instagram make it hard in some cases to report the abuse, but that Instagram also failed to act on 90% of researchers’ incident reports. "This report has one of the worst-ever failure rates of our reports," CCDH CEO and founder Imran Ahmed said, adding that the nonprofit has conducted several other Failure to Act reports over several years.
On Instagram, all users have the ability to report a DM, which can include text, photos, videos and/or audio messages. The report must include a reason, which can vary from lesser evils such as spam or "I just don’t like it," to more serious — possibly even criminal — offenses such as hate speech or sexual activity.