Meta’s photo platform is currently ailing on several fronts: some users could not access it, stories cannot be muted on iPhones.
The past updates and changes don’t seem to have been as successful as planned on Instagram. After the Reels scandal, numerous users are now annoyed that stories can hardly – or hardly – be muted. Now the photo platform was also partially unavailable.
Despite the smartphone’s default “mute” setting, stories and reels on Instagram have been running with sound for well over a week. The app can override the switch on the case, at least on iPhones. The videos only actually go silent when you turn the button down completely. There were and are many complaints on social networks. A situation that shouldn’t be like that, Meta also admitted. A company spokesman told Newsweek that it was a bug, “that’s why many iOS users have problems with the sound being turned on automatically when they watch stories”. Meta is working on fixing the problem. However, even an update has not been able to achieve this so far.
On the other hand, users in the USA in particular complained on Friday that they could not access Instagram at all. For others, it only affected areas such as direct messages, while others were offered old views, such as no longer having a reels tab. Instagram informed on Twitter: “We know that there are problems with access to Instagram.” The company is working on it. In the meantime, everyone should be able to access the platform again.
Instagram in the Tiktok mill
After the call under the hashtag “make instagram instagram again”, in which influencers and creators in particular complained that the video platform and thus Reels are increasingly coming into focus, the problems on Instagram are likely to be very unpleasant. Young people are threatening to migrate to the Chinese service Tiktok and Google’s YouTube, but chasing after them in terms of moving images does not seem to be a recipe for success. A dilemma.
Meanwhile, Youtube is also trying to compete with its own format, Youtube Shorts Tiktok. By giving content creators the opportunity to monetize videos, the aim is to first attract them and with them viewers.
