Over the years, Instagram has introduced several privacy features.
These privacy features limit or remove access to user content, messages and comments.
Some of these privacy features, like blocking, are easy to set up or find out if your account is using them.
Restricting a user is much harder to understand because it doesn’t completely remove your ability to see her content, post, or reply to her comments.
Let’s see how to find out if you are limited or blocked and what are the differences between limited and blocked on Instagram.

What does limited mean?

• Instagram has designed this privacy feature to allow users to restrict access to their account instead of deleting it.
• Limited action does and does not help you determine if you are in a limited state.
• Restricting Instagram is much more subtle and difficult to determine than total blocking.
• This type of restriction does not prevent you from seeing that user’s content, including their posts, stories, and comments.
• You can still like the post and the likes will remain public for everyone to see.
• The biggest changes come in terms of comments, messages and the status of their activities.

Comment Restrictions

• When your account is limited, your comments will also be limited.
• You can still see and reply to messages.
• You seem like there is no problem and you are commenting as usual.
• When viewing comments on a post, you can still see your comments, but no one else can.
• From the users you have restricted, your comments will be hidden behind the restricted comment button.
• The user can then accept or decline your comment.
• If a user does not approve your comment, it will only be visible to the user you sent it to and to yourself.
• The comment will not be published and will not be visible to others.
• Comments made before your account was restricted will remain unaffected.

Check your comments

• One way to determine if your account has been restricted is to check the comments.
• Since your comments will still appear as regular comments on your account, you will need to open your friend’s account or create a new one.
• After writing a comment, check immediately if you can see the comment from your friend’s account or your sub account.
• Don’t wait too long to check, the user can accept the comment and make it look normal.
• If you don’t see your response from an alternate account, your account has been limited.

Limitations of the operating state

• If the restrictions are limited, you will not receive information on the status of their recent activities.
• You can’t see when they were last online.
• Also, you won’t see the last time they looked at their messages.

Check the status of the operation

• This method is less effective than the first, but it can help determine if you are restricted or not.
• First, make sure you have enabled Show activity status in your settings.
• You can do this by going to your profile> Settings> Privacy> Activity status.
• After enabling the feature, you will be returned to the person’s profile.
• If they’ve recently posted but don’t appear active recently or you can’t see the status of your last view, you’re limited.
• You can also use a sub account or use a friend’s account to check activity status.
• If it appears on your secondary account but not on your primary account, this is further confirmation that you have been restricted.

Message Restrictions

• Your messages do not disappear, but end up in the message request folder.
• The user you restrict will not be notified of your message and will have to manually view it to process it.
• If a user sees your message, you won’t get a notification that she has read it.
• If a restricted user joins a group chat, the user will be notified that there is a restricted user in that group.

Send a message

• You can try sending DM to the person to see if you are limited.
• This method may take some time to confirm, but it’s easy to use.
• Send a message to the user and wait.
• If a user hasn’t responded for a long time, but has been active on their account, you will probably be limited.