Instagram has announced the introduction of an option enabling users to flag content they believe is fake and thus make it invisible for other users, web portal Seebiz reports.

Although Instagram does not encounter so many fake posts as Facebook, analysts highlight that it is perhaps more efficient in spreading misinformation.

Although posting of misinformation on Instagram is not banned, flagging such content is the first step Instagram has undertaken against fake news and false information spreading across social media platforms.

Similarly to the already well established practice on Facebook, it will be more difficult for such information to spread across Instagram in the future.

Back in May, Facebook introduced photo recognition on Instagram so that content marked on Facebook as fake or untrue could be automatically removed from Instagram as well.

Rather than deleted, posts recognised by an algorithm as fake will be removed from the search category and they will appear in search results.

Reporting fake posts on Instagram is for now available in the USA only, but users across the world will join them in the future.

Instagram users are much more active in liking, commenting and sharing content than their Facebook counterparts, and fact-checkers working with Facebook are sceptical and they do not believe that users can efficiently recognise and report fake posts.