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 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. 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. Since February 2017, up to ten pictures or videos can be included in a single post, with the content appearing as a swipeable carousel.
The new app added support for videos (viewing and creating posts or stories, and viewing live streams), album posts and direct messages. In September 2017, the company announced that public users would be able to limit who can comment on their content, such as only their followers or people they follow. In 2019, Instagram began to test the hiding of like counts for posts made by its users, with the feature later made available to everyone. 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. Also in 2020, Instagram rolled out a feature titled "suggested posts", which adds posts from accounts Instagram thinks a user would like to such user's feed. Instagram said the algorithm was designed so that users would see more of the photos by users that they liked, but there was significant negative feedback, with many users asking their followers to turn on post notifications in order to make sure they see updates.
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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". The company launched carousel image ads in October 2015, and video carousel ads in March 2016. In March 2015, Instagram announced it would implement "carousel ads", allowing advertisers to display multiple images with options for linking to additional content. Meta stated that the test would initially reach a limited number of users, with plans for a global rollout depending on feedback.
In June 2015, the desktop website user interface was redesigned to become more flat and minimalistic, but with more screen space for each photo and to resemble the layout of Instagram's mobile website. The Android version of Instagram was released in April 2012, followed by a feature-limited desktop interface in November 2012, a Fire OS app in June 2014, an app for Windows 10 in October 2016, and an app for iPadOS in September 2025. This renaming gave an even bigger response, it rapidly gained popularity, reaching 1 million registered users in two months, 10 million in a year, and 1 billion in June 2018. The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. These Mediterranean diet recipes are all under 10 minutes and 100% beginner-approved.
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In August 2017, reports surfaced that a bug in Instagram's developer tools had allowed "one or more individuals" to gain access to the contact information, specifically email addresses and phone numbers, of several high-profile verified accounts, including its most followed user, Selena Gomez. The video only contained fan-submitted Instagram photographs that used various filters to represent words or lyrics from the song, and over 1,200 different photographs were submitted. On August 9, 2012, English musician Ellie Goulding released a new music video for her song "Anything Could Happen". 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.
2014: Additional platforms and acquisition by Facebook
Similarly, an app for Windows 10 personal computers and tablets was released in October 2016. In April 2016, Instagram released a Windows 10 Mobile app, after years of demand from Microsoft and the public to release an app for the platform. Since the app's launch it had used the Foursquare API technology to provide named location tagging. In November 2012, Instagram launched website profiles, allowing anyone to see user feeds from a web browser with limited functionality, as well as a selection of badges, and web widget buttons to link to profiles.
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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. Instagram has been criticized in India for not taking steps to counter homophobic and transphobic contents.
In March 2021, a feature was added that prevents adults from messaging users under 18 who do not follow them as part of a series of new child safety policies. 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. A camera inside Direct lets users take a photo and send it to the recipient without leaving the conversation. The feature received a major update in September 2015, adding conversation threading and making it possible for users to share locations, hashtag pages, and profiles through private messages directly from the news feed. These researchers found that college students in the U.S. and China watch short-form videos for entertainment, knowledge, and to build social identities.
The company stated it was looking into concerns raised by the regulators and parents. According to the research, Instagram has a higher impact on appearance comparison than TikTok or Snapchat. The leak included presentations seen by company executives, and the findings mentioned CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2020. Instagram caused the userbase to fall into outrage with the December 2018 update. 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.
- On December 20, Instagram announced that the advertising section of the policy would be reverted to its original October 2010 version.
- Instagram later restricted the ability to view public profiles without logging in, prompting users to sign in after viewing a limited number of posts.
- In a now-deleted Facebook post, Instagram wrote that "When developing content, we recommend focusing on your business objective or goal rather than hashtags".
- 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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While Instagram has a neutral gender-bias format, 68% of Instagram users are female and 32% are male. As of 2014update, Instagram's users are divided equally, with 50% iPhone owners and 50% Android owners. This increased to 150 million in January 2017, 200 million in April, surpassing Snapchat's user growth, and 250 million active users in June 2017. In October 2016, Instagram Stories reached 100 million active users, two months after launch.
On July 5, 2023, Meta launched Threads, a social network platform connected to Instagram that allows users to make public shortform blog posts comprising text, photos, and videos, as well as to converse with other users and reblog other users' posts. In response to abusive and negative comments on users' photos, Instagram has made efforts to give users more control over their posts and accompanying comments field. Stories are more authentic than typical photos posted as posts because users know that in 24 hours their Stories will disappear if they don't add them as highlighted (however users can check who saw their Story for 48 hours after it was published). 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. mexican restaurants toronto 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.