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Instagram is a social media service owned by Facebook for sharing photos and videos. Instagram launched in 2010 exclusively as an iOS app and didn’t come to Android and the web until 2012.

Facebook acquired Instagram in April of 2012 for $1 billion. Facebook also offered to buy Instagram’s closest competitor Snapchat back in 2013 for $3 billion.

In June of 2017 Instagram shared that it reached 250M daily users, surpassing its rival Snapchat by almost 100M. It also has over 700M total users.

Instagram has been criticized for taking popular features from Snapchat such as face filters, stories, and stickers. The company also has plans moving forward to introduce more business focused features.

Global meta outage: What do we know, and what was the likely cause?

Global meta outage cause | Plug removed from socket

Yesterday’s global meta outage seemingly took out the company’s entire network, with users unable to access Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Threads, and Quest headsets.

The outage lasted between one and two hours for most users, and while everything now appears back to normal, questions are naturally being asked about what went wrong …

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Zuckerberg’s AI announcement raises privacy and toxicity red flags

Zuckerberg's AI announcement | 3D representation of Meta logos

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s AI announcement has raised major concerns, after he said that the company had more user data than was used to train ChatGPT – and would soon be using it to train its own AI systems.

The company’s plan to use Facebook and Instagram posts and comments to train a competing chatbot raises concerns about both privacy and toxicity …

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Social media CEOs testifying to congress on teen safety

Social media CEOs quizzed | Apps shown on iPhone

The timing of Meta’s announcement of new teen safety measures earlier this week likely wasn’t coincidental: Mark Zuckerberg and other social media CEOs are set to testify to Congress on the topic.

Facebook’s founder will be joined by the chief execs of TikTok, Snap, Discord and X as Congress seeks to determine whether the companies are doing enough to protect teens from harm …

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Adopting a sane approach to social media, and apps generally

A sane approach to social media | Sunrise reflecting on waves

The start of a new year is a time many of us use to take stock – of our goals, our habits, the ways in which we spend our time. For me, one significant change has been adopting a more sane approach to social media, and apps in general.

I’m a huge fan of technology, of course, but I also fully acknowledge that tech also has its downsides – and social media in particular has been a very mixed blessing …

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Unlink your Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger accounts – but only in Europe

Unlink your Instagram | Screenshot on smartphone resting on MacBook

Meta has announced a radical new move to comply with European antitrust requirements taking effect in March. The company will let you unlink your Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger accounts – as well as those for Facebook Marketplace and Facebook Gaming.

This means you’ll have the option of setting each up as a completely separate account, with no shared data between them …

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Threads launched in EU countries; no Instagram account needed to browse

Threads launched in EU countries | App shown on smartphone next to laptop

Social network Threads has now launched in EU countries, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg noting that this now opens it up to an additional 448M people. The company first teased this last week.

EU citizens will also be able to browse Threads without having to create an Instagram account – a move likely intended to placate antitrust regulators …

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Ad-free Facebook and Instagram subscription coming to Europe next month

Facebook and Instagram subscription | Mark Zuckerberg on stage with 'The future is private' changed to 'The future is €9.99/month'

A combined Facebook and Instagram subscription is coming to European users in the next few weeks, enabling an ad-free experience in both services for €9.99/month ($10.60).

Alongside this, parent company Meta has announced that it is “pausing” all advertising to under-18s at the same time, meaning they get the same privacy benefits as a paid subscription at no cost …

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Instagram may soon let you choose to see content only from verified accounts

Meta Verified | Facebook and Instagram verified accounts

Similar to what other platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram have been doing, Meta now allows users to pay to get verified and unlock some extra features on Facebook and Instagram. To convince more people to pay for the Meta Verified service, the company has reportedly been working on a new option that will let users choose to only see content from verified accounts.

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