Instagram

Instagram has added new options on the platform that allow users to hide the number of like and view counts of other people's posts, as well as the same counts on their own posts. The new options have been introduced to "depressurize people's experience" on the platform, the Facebook-owned social media company said. Instagram has been testing out the options in several countries since 2019,...

Digital privacy is a perennial hot topic these days, and Apple is regarded as being at the forefront of security when it comes to smartphone and tablet operating systems. For example, for an app to access your iPhone or iPad's camera, camera and microphone access must be enabled for the app in question in the Settings app. Social media apps will often ask you for access to your device's...

Instagram has been updated to allow users to create group video chats with up to 50 people on the social platform, thanks to an integration with Facebook's recently announced Messenger Rooms feature. Facebook unveiled Messenger Rooms as an alternative to Zoom and Group FaceTime last month, releasing it to a small trial group of users. Facebook said part of its plan was to extend the capability ...

With social media account hacking becoming increasingly more widespread, users would do well to make sure they're taking every security measure available to them. That goes doubly for frequenters of Facebook-owned Instagram, where account hijacking in particular is a recurring problem. One of the best ways to protect any online account is by using two-factor authentication (2FA). 2FA offers...

Instagram today said that it is now requiring all Instagram users to share their date of birth to "create safer, more private experiences for young people." Instagram users who have not already provided their birthday to Instagram will be prompted to share it. Instagram plans to ask for date of birth when the app is opened up, and will provide notifications asking for the information a...

Instagram will now automatically default the accounts of users on its platform under the age of 16 to "private" during initial account set-up, meaning only followers that a user accepts and approves of will be able to see their photos, videos, and posts, the company announced today. Instagram has been on a recent push to make its platform safer and more secure for younger users, which make...

Instagram today updated its Instagram Stories feature with a new translate option that is designed to automatically translate text in a Story. Instagram Stories are Instagram's ephemeral content posting option, with each Story vanishing after 24 hours. Automatic translation is able to translate text into more than 90 languages, but there is no audio translation option. In any Story that...

Instagram will start hosting full-screen videos as part of a major shakeup of the social platform, as the Facebook-owned company seeks to make itself more relevant in an era dominated by TikTok and YouTube. That's the major take-home from a video shared on Wednesday by Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram. In the video posted to his Instagram and Twitter account, Mosseri said that the social...

Facebook has confirmed rumors that it is testing the ability for Instagram users to post to the picture-based social media platform using a web browser on a desktop computer. With its focus on sharing photos taken with a smartphone camera, Facebook-owned Instagram has long been a mobile-centric social network that lacks many of its basic features in its web browser incarnation, including the ...

For as long as it's been around, Instagram has been a smartphone-oriented social network that doesn't extend to tablet devices and even lacks many basic features in its web browser incarnation, including the ability to post. However, that could be set to change, if a recently unearthed internal feature test ever goes public. Developer and leaker Alessandro Paluzzi has discovered Instagram...

Encrypted messaging app Signal has had a series of Instagram ads blocked from the social media platform, after it attempted to show users how much data the Facebook-owned company collects about them and how it's used to push targeted ads. In a blog post, Signal described how it generated the ads to show users why they were seeing them, simply by declaring upfront the information that the...

As a way to convince users to enable tracking across other apps and websites, Facebook is deploying the tactic of telling users that they must enable tracking as part of the App Tracking Transparency framework in iOS 14.5 if they want to help keep Facebook and Instagram "free of charge." App Tracking Transparency or ATT is the newest privacy feature to come to iPhone and iPad devices as part ...

Facebook is facing calls from an international coalition of children's health advocates to abandon its plans to build a version of Instagram for kids, reports The Guardian. The campaign follows news that broke in March which revealed that Facebook is developing a version of Instagram that's specifically aimed at children under 13. Instagram's current policy prohibits kids under 13 from using ...

Facebook is developing a version of Instagram that's specifically aimed at children under 13, according to an internal company post (via BuzzFeed News). "I'm excited to announce that going forward, we have identified youth work as a priority for Instagram and have added it to our H1 priority list," Vishal Shah, Instagram's vice president of product, wrote on an employee message board on...

Instagram today announced several new tools and changes coming to the platform with the aim of "protecting young people." Amongst the changes will be the inability for adults to DM teenagers (users under 18 years old) who don't follow them. Instagram says it has partnered with The Child Mind Institute and the non-profit group ConnectSafely to publish a new Parents Guide in the U.S. The new...

Instagram is launching new features to help support users on its platform who may be affected by negative body image or an eating disorder, the company has announced. Previously, Instagram had limited its policy to obscuring content that may trigger users suffering from an eating disorder, but the new policy adds to this by aiming to surface more expert-backed resources when people search...

Instagram has confirmed that a bug is preventing proper Instagram URL previews from appearing in iMessage conversations. In a statement to Mashable, Instagram says the behavior is not normal, and that it's "working to resolve Instagram link previews in iMessage so that they load normally." The lack of link previews was first brought up on Reddit around two months ago, so it seems the issue ...

A follow-up report by security researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk has alleged that Facebook Messenger and Instagram are collecting and using data from link previews in a way that would breach European privacy law. In October last year, Bakry and Mysk revealed that link previews in popular messaging apps can lead to security and privacy issues on iOS and Android. It was discovered...

New universal chat app "Beeper" combines 15 different chat platforms into a single inbox and offers iMessage on Android and Windows (via The Verge). The app comes from a team including former Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky, and enables users to integrate a range of messaging services, including WhatsApp, SMS, Signal, Telegram, Slack, Twitter, Skype, Hangouts, Discord, Instagram, and Facebook...

Instagram is today rolling out support for the new ProRAW photos that are able to be captured with the iPhone 12 and the iPhone 12 Pro Max. Instagram developer Tim Johnsen shared the news on Twitter, where he also said that ProRAW photos in the DNG format are not able to be edited on Instagram. Further details aren't available, but it seems that Instagram is converting the ProRAW file into...

Some Messenger and Instagram features are temporarily unavailable to users in Europe in order to comply with new rules on data usage currently being rolled out in EU countries. Affected users are seeing alerts in the Facebook-owned apps that some features aren’t available to "respect new rules for messaging services in Europe." The alert doesn't specify what the missing features are, but ...

The United States Federal Trade Commission today teamed up 46 states, the District of Columbia, and the territory of Guam to sue Facebook for maintaining an illegal social networking monopoly through years of anticompetitive conduct. Facebook is accused of engaging in a "systematic strategy" to eliminate threats to its monopoly, which included the 2012 acquisition of Instagram and the 2014...

Promotion for Apple Fitness+ is ramping up, with advertising initiatives and teases from instructors being spotted on social media, indicating that the new subscription service may be launching imminently. MacRumors reader Chris Weaver spotted that Best Buy has started advertising six-month free trials of Apple Fitness+ with Apple Watch purchases. The advert suggests that retailers have...

Facebook's Messenger and Instagram apps are getting a new "vanish mode" feature that gives users a new way to chat using disappearing messages. Disappearing messages can already be used in Messenger's "secret conversation" feature, but they require several steps and users have to set a timer to make the messages disappear. However, the new "vanish mode" is enabled by simply swiping up in ...