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How to flag false info on Instagram

The new feature won't let you delete a post, but fake info could get buried.

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Rae Hodge Former senior editor
Rae Hodge was a senior editor at CNET. She led CNET's coverage of privacy and cybersecurity tools from July 2019 to January 2023. As a data-driven investigative journalist on the software and services team, she reviewed VPNs, password managers, antivirus software, anti-surveillance methods and ethics in tech. Prior to joining CNET in 2019, Rae spent nearly a decade covering politics and protests for the AP, NPR, the BBC and other local and international outlets.
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Rae Hodge
Instagram

Instagram is looking to stymie the spread of disinformation via a new flagging tool.

 Thomas Trutschel/Getty Images

Instagram will now let users flag dubious posts for "false information" to trigger review by third-party fact-checkers, the company said on Thursday. The Facebook-owned platform will begin rolling out the feature immediately in the US. The rest of the world will get to try out the new tool by the end of August.

In a tweet, head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said, "Misinformation is an issue I've personally spent a lot of time on. I'm proud that starting today, people can let us know if they see posts on Instagram they believe may be false."

Here's how to flag false info:

  • Once you're in the Instagram app on your phone, go to the questionable post you want to flag.
  • In the top-right corner of the photo, tap the three-dot menu.
  • Tap "Report"; then tap "It's inappropriate."
  • Finally, tap "False information."

Voilà! The post has now been sent to a team of fact-checkers who -- if they decide you're right and the information in the post is false -- may choose to suppress the post, moving it further down the Explore tab and hashtag pages. 

The rollout is an effort by Instagram's parent company, Facebook, to combat the spread of misinformation on the platform, following Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election. According to Reuters, Facebook has raised the number of fact-checkers for both social networks to 54 internationally, though Instagram fact-checkers will be based only in the US.

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