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.

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A few days later, Instagram announced “Story Search”, in which users can search for geographic locations or hashtags and the app displays relevant public Stories content featuring the search term. In January 2017, Instagram launched skippable ads, where five-second photo and 15-second video ads appear in-between different stories. In May 2021, Instagram announced a new accessibility feature for videos on Instagram Reels and Stories to allow creators to place closed captions on their content.

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In September 2024, Instagram added a sticker editor which allows users to cut out elements of photos and send them privately. Users who follow each other can send private messages with photos and videos, in contrast to the public-only requirement that was previously in place. In December 2013, Instagram announced Instagram Direct, a feature that lets users interact through private messaging (colloquially called “DM” OR “DMs”; in some regions, the messages may be known simply as “direct”/”directs”).

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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.

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On December 20, Instagram announced that the advertising section of the policy would be reverted to its original October 2010 version. The Daily Beast was provided with a sample of the affected accounts and could confirm that, while many of the email addresses could be found with a Google search in public sources, some did not return relevant Google search results and thus were from private sources. Hours after the hack, a searchable database was posted online, charging $10 per search. However, the following month, more details emerged, with a group of hackers selling contact information online, with the affected number of accounts in the “millions” rather than the previously assumed limitation on verified accounts. The company said in a statement that it had “fixed the bug swiftly” and was running an investigation.

• Meta stated that the test would initially reach a limited number of users, with plans for a global rollout depending on feedback.
• The new app added support for videos (viewing and creating posts or stories, and viewing live streams), album posts and direct messages.
• The change was made official in October, with head of product Vishal Shah stating that the feature was underused and that some users were “surprised” when they realized their activity was being surfaced in this manner.
• Picardo et al. 2020 examined the relationship between self-harm posts and actual self-harm offline and found such content had negative emotional effects on some users.
• 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.
• These researchers found that college students in the U.S. and China watch short-form videos for entertainment, knowledge, and to build social identities.

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.
A comparison of users with non-users showed boys with an account differ from boys without in terms of over-evaluation of their shape and weight, skipping meals, and levels of reported disordered eating cognitions. A 2021 study by Büttner & Rudertb showed that not being tagged in an Instagram photo triggers the feeling of social exclusion and ostracism, especially for those with higher needs to belong. Mackson et al. 2019 found users were less lonely than non-users and Instagram membership predicts lower self-reported loneliness.

The system is built using a Facebook-developed deep learning algorithm known as DeepText (first implemented on the social network to detect spam comments), which utilizes natural-language processing techniques, and can also filter by user-specified keywords. After the July 2016 announcement, the ability to ban specific words began rolling out early August to celebrities, followed by regular users in September. In a recent survey, half of the applicants admitted to photo editing behavior which has been linked with concerns over body image. The tool used color analysis, metadata components, and face detection of users’ feeds. In 2015, Instagram was named No. 1 by Mashable on its list of “The 100 best iPhone apps of all time”, noting Instagram as “one of the most influential social networks in the world.” Instagram was listed among Time’s “50 Best Android Applications for 2013” list. In the U.S., there is relatively little government regulation of social media content, with most content removal taking place on a voluntary basis by the companies.
To comply with the GDPR regulations regarding data portability, Instagram introduced the ability for users to download an archive of their user data in April 2018. However, unlike post likes, the user who posted a comment does not receive notifications about comment likes in their notification inbox. On May 11, 2016, Instagram revamped its design, adding a black-and-white flat design theme for the app’s user interface, and a less skeuomorphistic, more abstract, “modern” and colorful icon.
On September 3, 2025, Instagram launched a native iPadOS app, which before relied on the iOS app and did not utilize the larger screen size of tablets. Subsequent episodes in June and August 2024 featured Reneé Rapp, Rachel Sennott, Megan Thee Stallion and GloRilla. These changes are ostensibly an attempt to hinder the spread of misinformation, while Instagram has also repeatedly stated that hashtags do not help posts get views. In April 2022, Instagram began testing the removal of the ability to see “recent” posts from various hashtags.

• They appear as circles below the profile picture and biography and are accessible from the desktop website as well.
• 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.
• In September 2011, a new version of the app included new and live filters, instant tilt–shift, high-resolution photographs, optional borders, one-click rotation, and an updated icon.
• The same month, they also began testing the removal of ability to share feed posts to stories.
• 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”.
• Following behind, college graduates consist of 18% and users with a high school diploma or less make up 15%.

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 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.
Later in May, TechCrunch reported about tests of a Location Stories feature in Instagram Stories, where public Stories content at a certain location are compiled and displayed on a business, landmark or place’s Instagram page. This setting can be changed to allow unlimited messages from other accounts that the user https://www.cuscocasinoonline.nl/ does not follow. Users can now only receive one direct message from accounts that they do not follow, and must approve the message request before further messages can be sent.
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.