Instagram Further Penalizes Private Messages Occurred on 10 Feb 2021

Instagram announced that they would be disabling the accounts of users who “break the rules” in their direct (private) messages:

Today, we’re announcing that we’ll take tougher action when we become aware of people breaking our rules in DMs. Currently, when someone sends DMs that break our rules, we prohibit that person from sending any more messages for a set period of time. Now, if someone continues to send violating messages, we’ll disable their account. We’ll also disable new accounts created to get around our messaging restrictions, and will continue to disable accounts we find that are created purely to send abusive messages.

They also proudly mention how much “hate speech” was censored during a three month period the year prior, including in DMs:

Between July and September of last year, we took action on 6.5 million pieces of hate speech on Instagram, including in DMs, 95% of which we found before anyone reported it.