Instagram is disabling the ability to share (and re-share) posts from your feed for stories as part of a test to see how it changes engagement with the popular feature. The company announced the change to a notification banner sent to users in “selected countries” where the test is taking place, Social Media Today writes. We contacted Instagram for details on exactly which countries are participating and will update if we hear more.
“We heard from our community that they want to see fewer posts in Stories,” begins the notification. “During this test, you will not be able to add a feed post to your story.” Sharing story posts again is a very common practice, although it creates situations where you will see a post in your feed and immediately see it duplicated in your friends’ stories.
As irritating as this situation may be, it is important to note that sharing story posts is how many artists, businesses and organizations get in front of users, due to the Instagram algorithm that favors friends and family. For example, pushing feed posts into stories opens up the opportunity for the mutual aid organization in your neighborhood to get more donations. Taking away the ability to share again is to respond to behavior that Facebook and Instagram encouraged in the first place, putting stories so prominently in the app and offering the ability to share them.
For now, disabling new shares remains a test, as are the changes in likes that the company has considered and the variety of new application layouts that it has prototyped. But the moment is a little ironic: Twitter today testing the ability to share tweets in Instagram stories as stickers. So you can start seeing a lot more new shares in your stories from an entirely different social media platform.
For some of you on iOS, we’ll be testing sharing a Tweet as a sticker on Instagram too! Touch the Instagram icon in the Tweet sharing menu to add the Tweet as a sticker to a story.
– Support for Twitter (@TwitterSupport) December 10, 2020