Instagram Testing new features This alerts the user when a serious technical problem occurs with the service.
Alerts appear as notifications in a user’s activity feed when “people are confused and looking for an answer,” Instagram says. In other words, when the app’s system is serious and has a long plunge like they had last week then they’ll notify us.
Given the turmoil caused when the service goes down, this is a wise feature of Instagram’s parent company Facebook. When Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram fail, people often wonder if there is something wrong with their Connect, their Internet or their account.
A small notification to the user, “Don’t worry, it’s not you, it’s us,” will probably save a lot of confusion in the future.
According to Instagram, this feature has been tested in the United States “in the coming months” and could be rolled out even more widely if useful. It’s easy to imagine that Facebook’s most important service, WhatsApp, has similar functionality. For many, messaging apps make up the major modes of digital communication.
In the same announcement today, Instagram also said it will introduce a new tool called “Account Status” that will notify users when content is reported to be inadequate.
“We start by making it easy for people to know if there is a risk that their account will be invalidated,” the company said.Â
The blog post said:
“In the coming months, we plan to add more information to this tool to better understand how content is distributed and recommended to different parts of Instagram.”
According to user reports on the Web monitoring site Downdetector, several Instagram users had issues earlier on Monday.
The firm also intends to launch a tool that will make it easier for users to determine whether their account is at risk of being disabled.
Following the disruptions, social media has been the subject of memes and jokes on Twitter. It is also dealing with former employee turned whistleblower Frances Haugen’s claim that the business consistently prioritised profit over cracking down on hate speech and disinformation.