How Instagram’s new Sensitive Control Filter works - and will it lower your reach?
Disclaimer: this post is about a sensitive topic that people have lots of different opinions and experiences about. My goal is to show you what I have learned from research, what I think from experience and give you sources. It’s not to change your mind or put myself in your shoes.
What I ask you is that whether you agree or disagree with me, before you post about it, that you please read the sources I list at the end of this blog post, so you make informed opinion and not just spread more rumors or stress for other small business and creators that can affect their mental health.
This week Instagram announced their new Sensitive Content Filter in this post dated July 20, saying that was the day they introduced it.
This filter that has been added to your settings, with the goal of giving you more control of what you see or don’t see in the platform.
People are freaking out, but nothing has changed - at least not until many people change their settings! So keep reading to understand the facts we know and my personal opinion about them.
Whenever Instagram announces any new feature, instead of reading the information and trying to understand what it does and how it impacts accounts and user experience, people usually jump to conclusions and start spreading rumors and alarming messages about it being another Instagram apocalypse for small businesses and creators.
@soyouwanttotalkabout, an account I personally think is great, that is verified by Instagram and has 2.9 million followers did this post to talk about how this feature is censoring their content by impacting their reach.
In the post they compare their reach from Explore from a post from July 13 that got a lot more views and another post from July 19, which they show has gotten a lot less reach from Explore.
But here’s the thing: Instagram didn’t even announce this feature until July 20. A Day after this post they say they think their post was affected by this new feature. Is it possible that Instagram implemented before and announced later? Yes! 100%. But for it to affect them, we would need two scenarios:
A great number of people would have had to manually change their Sensitive Control Filter to “Limit Even More”, since the default has not changed. This would be very unlikely to have happened before Instagram even announced the feature (how would they know to do it?)
The post in question would have had to have sensitive content, according to Instagram (violence, guns, sexually suggested content and such (read more here).
Is this will affect anyone’s reach, which I don’t believe it will, we most likely won’t know for months. But even if we do, shouldn’t users be allowed to choose what they see?
Let me tell you here: I am NOT affiliated with Instagram and have no problem criticizing Instagram and Facebook when I think there’s a reason to. But I do not think this is one of those cases.
I understand why terms like censorship and silencing start to spread fast on Instagram when they see a new feature they don’t understand.
When engagement is trending down, people try to find reasons to explain why this happened, not considering the fast growth of the platform, other factors like summer, a holiday, people starting to travel again, school vacations or just a variation between posts.
It’s very common for entrepreneurs and creators to confuse the high competition caused by Instagram being so crowded with accounts and content, with a plot on Instagram’s end to destroy their own users in hopes to get a few more ad dollar or push an agenda.
If we are talking about minority or marginalized groups I can also understand that the term “sensitive content” can be a trigger for those who unfortunately are so used to have their voices silenced and their rights suppressed. It’s a horrible reality and we stand with you.
So today I want to show you some of the details about this new Sensitive Control Filter feature in settings, and why I do not think there’s a reason for LGBTQ+ or Black small business owners and creators to worry about it.
How Instagram’s new Sensitive Control Filter works - and will it lower your reach?
Where can I find the Sensitive Control Filter option on the Instagram App?
To find it, go to your top right menu and choose Settings > Account > Sensitive Content Control
Things to know about Sensitive Control Filter on Instagram
1) Instagram was already limiting sensitive content by default for Explore, the same way as it still does now. What this feature does is allow people to switch to Allow or Limit Even More, two options that weren't available before.
2) This limiting happens only on the Explore page. It does not affect what you see from accounts you follow and engage with. The average of my views that come from the explore page is usually like 5-10% at best. Exceptions to that would be considered viral for me.
2) Sensitive content according to Instagram are things that:
can cause self-harm,
violence
controlled substance use
nudity and
sexual content
It’s content that don't quite infringe the community guidelines (which it's easy to know it's already hidden because we never see this type of content on explore, right?).
3) People who said their photos were taking down without a reason and think that's censorship, probably just don't know they infringed Instagram Community Guidelines with that specific pieve of content (and let’s not forget the infringement could easily be a word they used in a video or captions!). Instagram definitely need to get better at communicating were the infringement happened, so there’s less confusion.
For example: the head of Instagram Adam Mosseri mentioned on his stories Q&A last week when talking about stopping racism on Instagram, is the challenge that context is for them. There are certain words/terms that minority groups can use to talk about themselves, that is 100% not okay for someone else to use who are outside those groups and that is hard to identify with technology.
“We don’t allow racism or hate speech on Instagram but it’s harder to identify with technology because context matters. One word or emoji may be benign if one person says it and hate speech in another context. That’s the trick, but we’re getting better overtime”.
- Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram on a story Q&A (screenshots above)
So you could have a piece of content taken down because Instagram can see it as hate or infringement of guidelines. That's why they have that button that says "tell us if we made a mistake".
It's super important to use these buttons and feedback tools, so they can learn and improve the technology.
So from all these, we don’t think these filters should worry or impact anyone.
It will only impact you if a significant number of people change their filters to Show Even Less Sensitive Content and no one change it to Allow All, and only if you are posting this type of sensitive content.
Most likely, if you are in fact posting this type of sensitive content and many people choose not to see it, they would not be clicking or looking at your content anyway.
One fact to always remember is that engagement is down and people will -understandably so- jump to conclusion and think it's the filters. Just like they do with the algorithm at all times.
Here’s why your engagement is down:
it's summer and many people have their kids out of school
many people are vaccinated and resuming a more normal life
people are starting to travel again
there’s more awareness about setting boundaries with social media, following less accounts and spending less time scrolling on Instagram.
besides, the more time passes, the more new accounts appear on Instagram, the harder engagement gets for everyone
What we recommend when you see engagement trending down for a few weeks, is to change up how you deliver content to your audience. You will be surprised.
Sources for this article:
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Manu Muraro is the founder of Your Social Team, an Instagram training membership and content shop to help social media managers and Instagram savvy women entrepreneurs to beat the algorithm and grow their organic engagement (yes, even in 2021). This year she also launched Your Template Club, a Canva Template subscription to provide social media managers and Instagram savvy business owners with content template designed for engagement in their inbox.
Born and raised in Brazil, Manu moved to the U.S. in 2000 right out of college to work for Cartoon Network, where she made an award winning career in creative and strategy. In 2017, Manu started Your Social Team with the mission of helping women entrepreneur and social media managers grow engagement and sales through Instagram without the overwhelm.