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Instagram also announced that adults would not be allowed to message teens who don’t follow them as part of a series of new child safety policies. In February 2021, Instagram began testing a new feature called Vertical Stories, said by some sources to be inspired by TikTok. According to Instagram, they pushed forward the launch of Co-Watching in order to meet the demand for virtually connecting with friends and family due to social distancing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. On October 1, 2018, it was announced that Adam Mosseri would be the new head of Instagram. On September 24, 2018, Krieger and Systrom announced in a statement they would be stepping down from Instagram.

New ways to support teens and families on YouTube

In 2021, Instagram announced that like counts would return to be publicly viewable by default. If some of the accounts violate Instagram’s community guidelines, it will take action, which could include banning them. In May 2017, a survey conducted by the United Kingdom’s Royal Society for Public Health, featuring 1,479 people aged 14–24 and asking them to rate social media platforms depending on anxiety, depression, loneliness, bullying and body image, concluded that Instagram was the “worst for young mental health”. On March 11, 2022, Russia announced it would ban Instagram due to alleged “calls for violence against Russian troops” on the platform during the ongoing 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The app includes some AI features and the ability to post directly to Instagram or Facebook. The tab was later expanded again in November 2016 after Instagram Live launched to display an algorithmically curated page of the “best” Instagram Live videos currently airing. In June 2012, Instagram introduced “Explore”, a tab inside the app that displays popular photos, photos taken at nearby locations, and search. Instagram encourages users to make tags both specific and relevant, rather than tagging generic words like “photo”, to make photographs stand out and to attract like-minded Instagram users. In April 2018, Instagram launched its version of a portrait mode called “focus mode”, which gently blurs the background of a photo or video while keeping the subject in focus when selected. The feature originally limited photos to the square format, but received an update in August to enable portrait and landscape photos instead.

Body image

The second recruited 10 monthly users for a 5-day diary study, where they recorded their online habits. Instagram has since been accused of extending the practice to censor posts under vague and inconsistent circumstances, particularly in regards to sexually suggestive material. In a now-deleted Facebook post, Instagram wrote that “When developing content, we recommend focusing on your business objective or goal rather than hashtags”.
Instagram was one of the last freely available global social media sites in Iran. The Cuban government blocked access to several social media platforms, including Instagram, to curb the spread of information during the 2021 Cuban protests. Instagram has been blocked by China following the 2014 Hong Kong protests as many confrontations with police and incidents occurring during the protests were recorded and photographed. The Iranian government offered moderators bribes up to $9,000 to delete specific accounts, with Masih Alinejad being targeted in particular.

• These researchers found that college students in the U.S. and China watch short-form videos for entertainment, knowledge, and to build social identities.
• In 2013, the BBC discovered that users, mostly located in the United States, were posting images of drugs they were selling, attaching specific hashtags, and then completing transactions via instant messaging applications such as WhatsApp.
• In December 2023, Instagram launched a podcast titled “Close Friends Only” featuring conversations among celebrities.
• On August 2, 2024, Turkey blocked Instagram after the platform deleted posts from users offering condolences for the death of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
• Meta stated that the test would initially reach a limited number of users, with plans for a global rollout depending on feedback.
• A new update in November 2016 let users make their private messages “disappear” after being viewed by the recipient, with the sender receiving a notification if the recipient takes a screenshot.

Propaganda usage

In August, Instagram announced that it would start organizing comments into threads, letting users more easily interact with replies. Users can connect their Instagram account to other social networking sites, enabling them to share uploaded https://www.cuscocasinoonline.nl/ photos to those sites. This change became permanent and system wide a year later, and now hashtags can only be used to see a selection of curated content from “top” users.
In April 2016, Instagram added a “Videos You Might Like” channel to the tab, followed by an “Events” channel in August, featuring videos from concerts, sports games, and other live events, followed by the addition of Instagram Stories in October. The tab was updated in June 2015 to feature trending tags and places, curated content, and the ability to search for locations. Instagram said that this is to prevent abuse and so that hashtags do not help users gain views, but it has been noted that using hashtags is the only free method for a user to reach past their existing followers. In 2022 this was again tested on some users, and in April 2023 the ability to search recent hashtags was removed entirely.

• Lub & Trub 2015 showed that following more strangers increases social comparisons and depressive symptoms.
• Users can take photos and edit them using built-in filters and other tools, then share them on other social media platforms like Facebook.
• In November, Instagram began to support Alt text to add descriptions of photos for the visually impaired.
• This change became permanent and system wide a year later, and now hashtags can only be used to see a selection of curated content from “top” users.
• Paid verification allowed eligible Instagram users to request verification for their accounts via paying a fee, rather than relying solely on meeting the platform’s traditional criteria for verification.
• It was reported that these changes were primarily intended to discourage third-party clients replicating the entire Instagram experience (due to increasing monetization of the service), and security reasons (such as preventing abuse by automated click farms, and the hijacking of accounts).

In June 2017, Instagram announced that it would automatically attempt to filter offensive, harassing, and “spammy” comments by default. Meta representatives replied that they were disappointed with the lawsuit and were hoping instead to continue working with other companies from the industry to create new and better standards for applications teens use. The lawsuit claimed that Meta and its Instagram unit repeatedly misled the public about the dangers of its platforms and knowingly induced young children and teenagers into addictive and compulsive social media use. In October, 2023, 42 U.S. states filed a lawsuit against Instagram and parent company Meta, accusing them of contributing to a youth mental health crisis due to the addictive nature of the platforms.

Censorship and restricted content

In July, Instagram started allowing users to respond to Stories content by sending photos and videos, complete with Instagram effects such as filters, stickers, and hashtags. It also added messaging features, the ability to include multiple images or videos in a single post, and a Stories feature—similar to its main competitor, Snapchat, which allowed users to post their content to a sequential feed, with each post accessible to others for 24 hours. The changes included a feed more focused on Instagram’s content algorithms, full-screen photo and video posts, and changing the format of all of its videos to Reels. In July 2016, it announced that users would be able to turn off comments for their posts, as well as control the language used in comments by inputting words they consider offensive, which will ban applicable comments from showing up. In August 2016, Instagram launched Instagram Stories, a feature that allows users to take photos, add effects and layers, and add them to their Instagram story.
If a piece of content is labeled false or partly false on Facebook or Instagram then duplicates of such content will also be labeled as false. Content when rated as false or partly false is removed from the explore page and hashtag pages, additionally content rated as false or partly false are labeled as such. On December 16, 2019, Facebook announced it would expand its fact-checking programs towards Instagram, by using third-party fact-checkers organizations false information is able to be identified, reviewed and labeled as false information. It was reported that these changes were primarily intended to discourage third-party clients replicating the entire Instagram experience (due to increasing monetization of the service), and security reasons (such as preventing abuse by automated click farms, and the hijacking of accounts). Instagram has developed and released three stand-alone apps with specialized functionality.

Unlock YouTube’s hidden features

A Meta-operated image-centric social media platform, it is available on iOS, Android, Windows 10, and the web. Join our newsletter to receive the latest news, trends, and features straight to your inbox! Privacy practices may vary based, for example, on the features you use or your age.
Users can browse other users’ content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed. The backlash originated from an Instagram post and Change.org petition created by photographer Tati Bruening (under the username @illumitati) on July 23, 2022, featuring the statement “Make Instagram Instagram again. (stop trying to be TikTok; i just want to see cute photos of my friends.) Sincerely, everyone.”. In 2019, Apple pulled an app which let users stalk people on Instagram by scraping accounts and collecting data. In December, the company began rolling out the abilities for users to turn off the comments and, for private accounts, remove followers.

Recent studies highlighted the connection between short-form videos such as Instagram Reels and the brain’s reward system, specifically dopamine release. When children watch short-form videos, they learn to expect continual stimulation and fast-paced changes, which can cause problems when engaging in activities that require greater focus, such as reading. The Wall Street Journal reported that some parents are concerned about the effects of short-form videos on their children, as there is no way to disable Instagram or set limits. Researchers from the Guizhou University of Finance and Economics and Western Michigan University found that short-form videos like YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram Reels may make it easier for young adults and children to develop addictive behavior because short-form videos provide “short bursts of thrills”.