Instagram

Most social media networks and chat platforms these days include a feature that shows when a user was last online or last active on the service, which can be either helpful or a hindrance, depending on your personal or business situation. WhatsApp includes an optional "Last Seen" status for the person you're chatting with in a conversation thread, while Instagram tells you how long it was...

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...

There appear to be ongoing issues with Instagram, based on a number of complaints from Instagram users who are unable to use the social network as normal. Some users have been logged out of the app and are not able to access it at all, while others are seeing blank image posts or are having issues loading images. Still others are seeing older images in the timeline that were originally...

Instagram today rolled out new Following and Favorites feed options, allowing users to sort their feeds to see content posted chronologically from the people they follow or content just from their favorite people. The new Following option is a traditional chronological feed, and it displays the latest posts from the accounts that each Instagram user follows in reverse chronological order....

The head of Instagram has commented on Twitter about the lack of an iPad app for Instagram, saying that while the social media platform is asked about an ‌iPad‌ app a lot, there is still not enough demand to warrant one. In a Twitter exchange with YouTuber Marques Brownlee, Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram, said his company gets asked about an ‌iPad‌ app a lot, but it's "still just not a...

Instagram has quietly removed the ability for its users to limit their daily usage of the app to less than 30 minutes, reports TechCrunch. In 2018, Instagram introduced options in the app to set a daily time limit, with a reminder to be sent when that time limit is reached – useful for those who want to cut down on their social media usage. Originally, users were able to select a time...

Instagram today began rolling out subscription options that are designed to allow Instagram users to pay for exclusive Instagram Live videos and Stories from their preferred creators. As noted by TechCrunch, Instagram is testing the subscription feature with a selection of 10 U.S. creators, each of whom can choose their subscription price. Subscription pricing ranges from $0.99 per month to...

Back in December, Instagram lead Adam Mosseri said that Instagram was planning to reintroduce a chronological feed, and now Instagram is officially testing chronological feed options. Going forward, there will be three different Instagram feed options available. The "Home" feed will be the Instagram experience that's available today, with Instagram suggesting content that it thinks that...

Instagram is planning to reintroduce a version a chronological feed option in 2022, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said today in a Senate panel on teen safety (via Engadget). "We're currently working on a version of a chronological feed that we hope to launch next year," Mosseri said, explaining that Instagram believes in giving people more control over how they view content. Such a feature...

Facebook, now rebranded to "Meta," is delaying plans to use end-to-end encryption for Messenger and Instagram messages until at least 2023, a year later than the previous deadline promised by the social media behemoth. Writing in The Telegraph, Meta's head of global safety, Antigone Davis, said that the company is pushing back its deadline to roll out end-to-end encryption as the default...

Instagram is preparing to launch in-app subscriptions, allowing users to pay for exclusive content from their favorite creators as the platform looks to move away from conventional ads for monetization, recent App Store listings have suggested. In May of this year, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in an interview with The Information that the platform was exploring the idea of subscriptions, ...

Instagram still doesn't offer an app for the iPad, but the social networking company has expanded how users can upload content to the site, allowing for pictures to be posted from the desktop. According to TechCrunch, Instagram is rolling out desktop posting support this week after testing the feature with a limited number of users over the summer. Sharing a photo or a video under one...

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...