News 16 June 2020
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Instagram To Re-Assess Policies & Algorithms To Stop Mistreatment Of Black Users

16 June 2020
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Instagram has now announced plans to improve its “policies, tools, and processes” to support its black users.


The new plans were announced by the app’s CEO – Adam Mosseri – in a blog post.


When sharing the post on Twitter, Mosseri wrote:  “We stand in solidarity with the Black community. But that’s not enough. Words are not enough. That’s why we’re committed to looking at the ways our policies, tools, and processes impact Black people and other underrepresented groups on Instagram.”


Instagram will focus on focus on harassment, verification, distribution and algorithmic bias when re-assessing ways to positively impact to impact black people.


In the blog post, the company said: 
“Any work to address the inequalities Black people face has to start with the specific safety issues they experience day to day, both on and off platform.”

To “ensure it’s as inclusive as possible”, the company will also be making changes to its verification system.


Instagram will also address the issue of ‘shadowbanning’, which the company describes as 
“filtering people without transparency, and limiting their reach as a result”. The app will provide more information on the type of content it doesn’t recommend.

It added: “We need to take a harder look at the underlying systems we’ve built, and where we need to do more to keep bias out of these decisions” the company said.