The Internet has always been a place full of toxicity, but it is no less true that coexistence has worsened significantly recently due to the increased polarization of society. This, of course, affects social networks. Here, while Twitter/X tries to preserve a particular vision of freedom that terrifies advertisers, others like instagram They try to put more order and barriers into interactions.

According to Alessandro Paluzzini’s leakwho on previous occasions announced things that were implemented on Instagram, the social network would work on a feature that would consist of the possibility add reason to subsequent request. In the screenshot that Paluzzini posted on his X (formerly Twitter) account, the user would see a message that says; “Select the reason you want to add to your follow-up request. It helps that person know who you are.”

The ability to add a reason to follow an Instagram account is reminiscent of the ability of LikedIn, a social network for professionals owned by Microsoft, to send a personalized message when sending a request to connect with other users on the platform. However, the approach of the network belonging to Meta could be different focus more on protecting users from strangers. In fact, Instagram has already changed the way direct message requests work to ensure that people who don’t follow an account can only send them one direct message request.

Instagram is not only working to improve the personal cybersecurity of its users, but also their privacy with the ability to disable read receipts in the app, which is currently under development and has not been officially implemented. This feature will allow users to hide their “See” status with the push of a button.

As we mentioned at the beginning, the Internet has always been a very toxic place, but the ability of users to defend themselves is something that has become especially important in recent years, and not just from a cybersecurity perspective. But there is no benevolence here, or at least not only benevolence, but also the interest of the companies behind the social networks themselves to protect their image and the trust that users can place in them, all the more so when we are talking about Meta because of the dark episode in which the company participated.