The app might tell you when it’s experiencing an outage
Remember last week, when Instagram (and, well, all of Facebook) went down for the better part of a day? Remember when it happened again on Friday afternoon, just as we were all heading into a long, relaxing weekend? Well, Instagram can’t promise its app will never experience these sorts of issues again, but it does want to improve how it communicates with users whenever a problem sprouts up.
According to a blog post from the company, a new feature is currently in testing that would automatically notify affected accounts in the event of an outage. Instagram intends to limit these notifications to moments when enough users are trying to determine if the app is down — like, say, when it starts to trend on Twitter. If it does become an official feature, it’ll be a while before it arrives for everyone. Instagram plans to run its test in the US for the next several months — plenty of time for another outage or, uh, seven. Whether this notification will even get delivered when the entire service is down remains to be seen.
It’s not the only change that could be coming to the app. Instagram wants to alert users when their account might be disabled for violating community guidelines. It’s part of a larger initiative from the service to be more forthcoming about what’s happening with your posts, and it’ll all be contained in an “Account Status page.”
If you’re concerned the company terminated your profile without just cause, an option to request a review of the action will be available alongside this information. It’s a slow start for some much-needed transparency for the service, but Instagram promises more information in the coming months.
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