Swift initiates censorship on Instagram

with thousands of angry comments over her feud with the social media star Kim Kardashian and her husband Kanye West.

The latest row centred on whether Swift had given permission to West to use an ironic line about having sex with her in a song. She claims that she did not give him permission then to refer to her as a ‘‘bitch’’.

Kardashian leaked a recording which appeared to show that Swift had been consulted by West when it came to the line about him bedding her in his song Famous. Kardashian also posted a series of cartoon ‘‘snake’’ emojis which was seen as a thinly veiled reference to her online rival.

In the social media world, when internet megastars go to war, so do their tens of millions of followers. Kardashian’s supporters tried to bombard Swift’s Instagram account with similar snake images and messages. However, their snake posts on Swift’s account vanished almost immediately.

The row has far wider implications than for publicityhungry stars vying for attention. Social media sites have previously insisted they are virtually powerless to protect users against abuse, but this suggests otherwise.

Swift, who is dating the British actor Tom Hiddleston, is the second-most popular celebrity on Instagram after Selena Gomez, with more than 86 million followers. Although Instagram allows users to remove individual comments they deem offensive, this can be impractical when facing hundreds or even thousands of messages. A single Instagram post by Swift last week has half a million comments.

Last week Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, declined to comment on how the snake messages had disappeared so quickly, but The Sunday Times quoted a source saying it was Swift, or someone controlling her account, who had wiped the abusive posts automatically using a ‘‘new tool’’ they were testing.

The tool was being developed to help people such as celebrities who had ‘‘a high volume of comments’’ to deal with abuse, said the source.

Officially Instagram would not confirm whether Swift was using the tool. The company said it was using a limited number of accounts to test performance.

However Mark Shaw, a social media expert, said that allowing stars to censor comments would ‘‘defeat the purpose’’ of the medium.

‘‘If you start manipulating ordinary members’ comments to make the celebrities look wonderful all the time, there’s going to be a backlash.’’