San Francisco, Jun 30 (IANS): To safeguard its platform from online bullying, Facebook-owned Instagram has introduced two new tools -- a filter to block certain offensive comments and a spam filter in nine languages.

The first filter is optional that can be toggled on or off in the settings. It hides offensive or inappropriate comments from appearing on posts and in live video.

"To help, we have developed a filter that will block certain offensive comments on posts and in live video. All other comments will appear as they normally do and you can still report comments, delete comments or turn them off," Instagran said in a post late on Thursday.

"Also, you can always turn this filter off. To access it, click the "…" settings menu from the profile and scroll to tap "Comments"," the blog post added.

The spam filter looks for any obvious spam in comments, blocking it from users' posts and live videos.

The filter will remove spam written in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, French, German, Russian, Japanese and Chinese.

The updates are available as part of Instagram version 10.26 available for iOS and Android.