What are Instagram Hidden Words?

Instagram’s announcement describes a tool that, when turned on, automatically filters DM requests containing offensive words, phrases and emojis. It focuses on DM requests, not your regular inbox, because that is where people usually receive abuse from accounts they do not follow. Instagram said it works like its existing comment filters, and that both are controlled from one section of Privacy settings called Hidden Words. Menu names move around, so look for the name rather than a path.

• A predefined list of offensive terms, built with anti-discrimination and anti-bullying organisations.
• Your own custom list of words, phrases or emojis.
• Matching requests go to a separate hidden requests folder, with the text covered until you tap to uncover it.
• From there you can accept the request, delete it or report it.

Instagram also said the filtering happens on your own device, so the feature does not send message content back to its servers, and it does not share the content of your requests unless you report them. It said it would roll out in several countries first, so availability can differ by region.

The same announcement notes that Instagram offers comment tools to hide offensive comments and to choose terms you do not want in comments under your posts. It also said it had started to hide common misspellings of offensive words from a manual comment filter, so a custom list catches slightly more than the exact spelling you typed.

A custom list is easy to over-fill. If a word on it is also your trigger word, such as a keyword people comment to get a link, those comments may be hidden from you. We could not find Meta documentation on how filtered comments reach connected apps, so test with a comment from a second account before relying on it.

Tip: Keep your trigger keywords and your blocked words as separate lists in a note somewhere. When a campaign goes quiet, check the filter list first.