Instagram is adding in-app notifications to alert you of technical issues

The massive Facebook outage last week definitely took us all by surprise. However, the tech giant is working on ensuring that won’t happen again, as it’s currently building in-app notifications that will alert users to “temporary issues” like outages or other technical difficulties. 

The notifications will be visible in users’ home page. The notifications are there to specifically alert users about app bugs and issues, such as Story uploads not working or large-scale outages. 

Before you frown at the idea of Instagram alerting you to every issue it faces, the platform is clarifying that not every issue will be notified, but only the ones that may be a source of great 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 explained in a blog post. The company added that it’s testing the feature in the US “for the next few months.” 

In addition, Instagram also previewed the new “account status” section of its app, which alerts users to “what’s going on with your account” in a more general sense. The popular photo and video sharing site is finally giving out proper explanations as to why some posts get removed or when an account “is at risk of being disabled” due to rule violations. 

“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,” Engadget wrote. 

The Oversight Board, an entity that moderates content decisions on social media platforms, has repeatedly informed Instagram’s parent company Facebook that it needs to “do a better job at explaining rules to users, and account status could help them do just that.” 

Instagram explained that “in the coming months” it is working on updating account status to let people know “how their content is being distributed and recommended across different parts of Instagram.”