Today Instagram is introducing a way for you to limit interactions with anyone who isn’t on your close friends list. This means you will only see comments, DMs, story replies, tags, and mentions from people who you’ve added to your close friends list.
Other followers will still be able to interact with your posts, but their comments and messages won’t be visible to others, nor to you. This feature is aimed at teens, but anyone can use it to limit interactions with people who are bothersome.
Once you’ve turned this on, you’ll be reminded to turn it off in a set amount of time. You can also choose to only limit interactions from recent followers and/or accounts that don’t follow you.
Additionally, you can restrict specific accounts (without blocking them) so they won’t see when you’re online or when you’ve read their messages. Furthermore, their messages to you won’t show up in your DM inbox, instead being moved to Message requests. Their new comments on your posts will only be visible to you and them, and when trying to tag or mention you they will see a message saying you don’t let everyone do this.
Via