Instagram Plans To Roll Out In-App Notifications For Service Outage

Instagram has announced that it is testing notifications that will alert users of “temporary issues” like outages or other technical issues after a massive Facebook outage that took all of the social network’s apps offline for more than six hours.

The new notification is expected to appear in users’ Activity Feed when released alongside other in-app notifications. The message is also designed to inform users about specific issues, like Story uploads not working or a more widespread problem.

The company wrote in a blog post that it does not plan to notify users of every issue when there is an outage except for important ones to avoid widespread 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,” the company added that it’s testing the feature in the US “for the next few months.”

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Instagram also showed off a new “account status” section of its app, which is expected to alert users to “what's going on with your account” more generally. The company said that it's starting with notifications about posts that are removed and when an account “is at risk of being disabled” due to rule violations.

The feature is designed 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.