AI to tackle cyberbullying

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Technological advancements have increased the reach of cyberbullies to a great extent. Nowadays, bullying is rampant on social networking sites as well as online dating apps. Adam Mosseri, the head of Facebook-owned Instagram, has thus made combatting online bullying a top priority since he took over the reins for Instagram in October. Similarly, Blued, a social networking app for the LGBTQ community, has launched a campaign against bullies.

In July this year, Instagram announced the launch of a new AI feature that will notify users when a comment they write could be considered offensive before they post it. Instagram said it will also soon begin testing a new feature called "Restrict" that will allow users to hide comments from specific users without notifying those users that they've been muted.

Talking about the issue of cyberbullying, Shradha Agarwal, COO, Grapes Digital, said, "Peer victimisation and cyberbullying on social media are increasing day by day. Being one of the largest populated countries today with the second largest internet base of 600 million approx, India has the highest rate of cyberbullying as confirmed by the parents. Thirty-seven per cent of the parents in India have confirmed that their child was bullied online against China where it was only 17 per cent. This is very alarming and concerning for parents today as we need to not only understand who is cyberbullying but also the platforms where our kids are being bullied."

Blued, on the other hand, has launched a campaign that puts light on the most common situations gay men face while trying to find a dating partner. Talking about Instagram, Agarwal continued, "Instagram has been one such platform where comments are publically visible. Many bloggers have accepted that despite doing so well for themselves they have been subjected to derogatory comments making them lose their sleep, ending in depression. So Instagram coming up with a feature to restrict these comments was very important. The problem many people have faced today is that if you delete somebody's comments from your page they start writing more and if you block them, they start writing from other fake profiles. Hence, we needed something that could not trigger their anger and solves the problem also. 'Restrict' by Instagram will solve this problem as the comments will then be visible to only the profile owner and the comment maker. But this will tackle only light cases, because if someone had made it a mission to bully another person they will continue to do the same with multiple profiles fake or real."

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