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How Taylor Swift & Kanye West's Feud Changed Instagram

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With all of the headlines about Taylor Swift's current legal issues, the last thing we're thinking about is her ever-present ~drama~ with Kanye West. Although it might seem like a thing of the past (at least for now), their most recent feud, which took place over social media, sparked changes in the way Instagram screens excessive spam comments made on a users' page. 

In case you need a refresher on what last went down between Kanye, Kim and Taylor, it all revolved around Kanye's song "Famous," in which he called out Taylor with the infamous lyric, "I made that bitch famous." Granted, I would be a bit upset if he said that about me, too. 

According to a recent Entertainment Weekly article, the conflict has been more influential than we ever thought it would be—it's literally changing how we comment on people's Instagram posts.

In a Wired profile, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom declared his intention to “clean up” the internet. One of the ways he's cleaning the platform up is by limiting users from posting a block of emojis—regardless of whether they're considered positive or negative emojis—on a verified user's profile.

Remember when Swift was having conflicts with Calvin Harris and Katy Perry, along with the Wests, last July? Her Instagram posts were flooded with snake emojis until, suddenly, they were gone. That's because Instagram used this situation to test out a function that would delete certain words or emojis from your feed—a function that was later made available to all users.

According to Vanity Fair, a new notification now pops up when a user tries to post a block of emojis which reads, "This comment has too many special characters. Edit your comment before posting. We restrict certain content and actions to protect our community.” It also allows the user to report a problem if they believe they received the message in error. 

Tools such as this can be tricky since they affect users' free speech. However, according to the author of Systrom's Wired profile, Nicholas Thompson, “Freedom of speech does not mean the freedom to shitpost. [Systrom's] network isn’t a public square; it’s a platform people can choose to use or not.” 

Kimye and Taylor might not have thought they were changing the world when they were arguing over social media, but they kind of did. Well, maybe not the world, but they definitely changed Instagram! 


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