How AI became Instagram's weapon of choice in the war on cyberbullying

On a platform meant to be a safe place to share snapshots of users' lives, Instagram has the greatest cyberbullying problem of all social media sites. But instead of putting the responsibility on their users to report abuse, as Facebook and Twitter have done, Instagram is the first social media outlet to use machine learning to eliminate abusive language on its platform. A recent survey from anti-bullying charity Ditch the Label found that 42% of over 10,000 UK youths between the ages of 12 and 25 found Instagram to be the platform where they were most bullied--with Facebook and Twitter falling behind at 37% and 9%, respectively. And 71% of the subject pool agreed that all social media networks are not doing enough to stop cyberbullying. To address cyberbullying head-on, Instagram recently announced a new strategy: Integrating a machine learning algorithm to detect and block potential bullies on its platform.