The app is also adding a new 'account status' feature for personalized notifications.
Instagram
One week after a massive Facebook outage that
took all of the social network’s apps offline for more than six hours,
Instagram says it’s testing
notifications that will alert users to “temporary
issues” like outages or other technical issues.
The
new alerts would appear in users’ Activity Feed, alongside other in-app notifications.
The messages could be used to let users know about specific issues, like Story
uploads not working, or a more widespread problem, like the two outages last
week. Importantly, Instagram says it doesn’t plan to alert users to every
issue, but ones that may be a source of widespread confusion.
“We
won’t send a notification every single time there is an outage, but when we see
that people are confused and looking for answers, we’ll determine if something
like this could help make things clearer,” Instagram wrote in a blog post. The
company added that it’s testing the feature in the US “for the next few
months.”
Instagram
Separately,
Instagram also showed off a new “account status” section of its app, which is
meant to alert users to “what's going on with your account” more generally.
Instagram says it’s starting with notifications about posts that are removed
and when an account “is at risk of being disabled” due to rule violations.
According
to Instagram, the feature is meant to make it easier for users to understand
why a post may have been removed, and whether or not they may be in danger of
losing an account altogether. While the app has notified users in the past when
a post is labeled or removed, the company hasn’t always done a good job letting
people know which policy they violated. The Oversight Board
has repeatedly told Facebook
it needs to do a better job at explaining rules to users, and account status
could help them do just that.
Account
status could also help the app address a more Instagram-specific issue:
concerns over “shadowbanning.” Instagram
says that “in the coming months” it plans to update account status to let
people know “how their content is being distributed and recommended across
different parts of Instagram.”
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