Instagram is testing in-app notifications for service outtages

One week after an enormous that took all the social community’s apps offline for greater than six hours, Instagram says it’s that can alert customers to “momentary points” like outages or different technical points.

The brand new alerts would seem in customers’ Exercise Feed, alongside different in-app notifications. The messages might be used to let customers find out about particular points, like Story uploads not working, or a extra widespread downside, like the 2 outages final week. Importantly, Instagram says it doesn’t plan to alert customers to each problem, however ones which may be a supply of widespread confusion.

“We gained’t ship a notification each single time there may be an outage, however once we see that persons are confused and searching for solutions, we’ll decide if one thing like this might assist make issues clearer,” Instagram wrote in a weblog submit. The corporate added that it’s testing the characteristic within the US “for the following few months.”

Individually, Instagram additionally confirmed off a brand new “account standing” part of its app, which is supposed to alert customers to “what is going on on along with your account” extra usually. Instagram says it’s beginning with notifications about posts which might be eliminated and when an account “is prone to being disabled” as a result of rule violations.

In line with Instagram, the characteristic is supposed to make it simpler for customers to know why a submit could have been eliminated, and whether or not or not they might be in peril of dropping an account altogether. Whereas the app has notified customers previously when a submit is labeled or eliminated, the corporate hasn’t all the time performed job letting folks know which coverage they violated. The Oversight Board has Fb it must do a greater job at explaining guidelines to customers, and account standing may assist them just do that.

Account standing may additionally assist the app deal with a extra Instagram-specific problem: issues over Instagram says that “within the coming months” it plans to replace account standing to let folks know “how their content material is being distributed and beneficial throughout completely different elements of Instagram.”