Instagram this morning announced that a change that may drag the reach of your brand's organic content even lower than it already is.

The change is in the way the app handles what it calls “sensitive content” — that's content which doesn't break community guidelines, like nudity would, but comes close, like alcohol or posts where someone is holding a gun.

Specifically, Instagram will let people specify how much of this content they want to see: More of it, a usual amount, or less of it. Instagram doesn't promise any of this will actually work, couching the setting with phrases like “You might see less sensitive content.”

That “I want to see more sensitive stuff” won't be available to kids.

For the last year, there has been a way to filter this stuff out, but it only applied to Instagram's Explore page. Now, the company says a user's settings will be applied (or should I say “might” be applied) across Search, Reels, Accounts You Might Follow, Hashtag Pages, and In-Feed Recommendations.

So if your brand posts content that sometimes lives in this grey area, you might start seeing reduced reach.

Oddly, though, Instagram says this only applies to content from accounts people are not following. If an account they do follow posts something sensitive, Instagram will apparently let it through. 

This, then, wouldn't have been a problem back in the glory days of Instagram where your feed was just people you followed. But today's Instagram app is a dog's breakfast of suggested accounts, Reels forced on you, people the algorithm thinks you should follow, recommended content, ads, and shit they found under the lunchroom coffee machine.

Anyway, if you want to try this yourself, go to Settings, Account, then Sensitive Content Control.