It’s been a long couple of weeks for Instagram.
Recently, the team at Instagram have introduced a few changes to their platform. Some changes have been praised as improvements, while some haven’t been as welcomed by users. What do you think?
Instagram will ban graphic self-harm images and videos
The decision, announced at the end of January, comes after almost two years of media and political pressure. It all started when the father of 14-year-old London schoolgirl Molly Russell, who took her own life in 2017, blamed the platform for his daughter’s death. Instagram is now expected to take measures against eating disorder content as well.
Instagram will start showing IGTV videos on users’ timelines
IGTV has not been as successful as Palo Alto may have hoped but this new change has the potential to improve the situation. IGTV videos will now appear on users’ timelines as if they were regular posts. When clicking on one, the user will see the IGTV label under the name while an icon on the bottom left can redirect the user to the IGTV platform, where the user can see one video after another.This change isn’t very invasive as users will only see IGTV content published by people they are following. Nevertheless, critics are exploding on the web, as people accuse Instagram of forcing users to watch IGTV.
Users will no longer be able to see who viewed their stories after 24 hours
In other words, the highlights section will no longer show names and will only show how many people have viewed your story. The reaction of users to this change hasn’t been positive. Some complain that they will not be able to ‘catch their stalkers’ anymore. A solution to not having stalkers at all might be to set the profile private…
Facebook page admins can now reply to Instagram direct messages from within Facebook
We all know Facebook and Instagram belong to Zuckerberg, and this update now brings us one step closer to cross-platform integration. Rumours are this may be part of a bigger plan that is brewing at Palo Alto. According to an article published in The Guardian, Zuckerberg wants to make its three messaging apps – Messenger, Instagram and Whatsapp – interoperable. Soon we might all be able to send messages between the networks without switching apps.