The social media application, Instagram, a product of Meta effectively for sharing of photos and videos, has released new feature that seeks to enhance the quality of discourse in its comment sections. Chamfered “Thoughtful Replies”, this product employs state-of-the-art natural language processing to elicit users to provide more profound and helpful comments on the post.

Thoughtful Replies function in the same way as the common reply prediction option, based on the content of the user’s comment while they are typing. The system also checks if the comment is short, vague or possibly could contain negative feedback to the author and then the system politely asks the user to expand his ideas further. For instance, if the user enters a short message like “Nice pic,” then the system can propose, Would you mind telling me more about what you enjoyed about this picture?

This is a preventive strategy meant to encourage users to post better quality comments and discourage the creation of low quality comments which are common in most active topics. Through this way, Instagram wants the users to take their time in responding in a way that will make the experience more rewarding to the content creators and those who follow them.

Of all the components of Thoughtful Replies, the best one is that it must consider context. The system makes use of the type of post, the relationship that the user has with the poster, and the tenor of the previous comments in determining whether to suggest. This way we make sure that the prompts, which are given to people, are adequate and suitable for the given context.

Instagram also clarified that Thoughtful Replies should not be considered as a moderation tool since it does not allow users to block them from posting any comment they want. But it is not intended as a suggestion, it’s more like a reminder towards more effective communication. If a user wishes to keep her/his original comment intact, s/he can easily ignore the suggestions.

Thoughtful Replies is now available as a new addition to Instagram’s continuous fight against negativity and enhancement of user experience. Over the past few years, the company has put measures in place to tackle challenges like, cyber bullying, hate speech and fake news on the comment sections.

Many users of Instagram have shown interest in the new feature as they feel it can be useful for improving the level of engagement with their fans. Huge numbers of shallow posts have been hard to handle for many for long, and there’s usually a challenge of discerning between shallow and deep posts. It could also expose more valuable replies so that creatives could more easily develop and sustain active audiences for their posts.

Thoughtful Replies’ implementation will be incremental; it will be initially tested on a small percentage of English speaking users followed by the rest of the languages and geographies. In this first stage of the project, Instagram will look at users’ responses and the system’s performance indicators to tweak the algorithms and guarantee the success of the system with different users.

Some commentators have questioned the practices of data collection and processing necessary for the purpose of analyzing users’ comments in real-time. In response, Instagram has said that the Thoughtful Replies system only works on-device and it does not send the content of draft comments to Instagram servers for analysis. Such an approach safeguards the user’s privacy and at the same time offer the advantage of the feature.

In addition to Thoughtful Replies, Instagram is also launching new materials on civil and productive online interactions. These will be available in the app and will give guidelines on how to go about starting healthy arguments, giving constructive criticism or dealing with sensitive issues in comments sections.

The changes effected by Thoughtful Replies do not stop at enhancing the quality of specific comments only. To that end, Instagram aims to bring about a chain reaction that results in a general upgrade of the quality of discussions on the social media platform.

This could result into better community connection, more fulfilling user encounter, and might even lower the cases of misunderstanding or disagreement that are mostly caused by unsuitable or ill-worded remarks.