Instagram Is Testing Screenshot Alerts, So Creep With Caution

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Raise your hand if you're the kind of person who often takes screenshots of other people's Instagram Stories to then discuss in a nonpublic setting like, say, a group text. Yeah, us too. And until now, that investigative/bordering-on-creepy behavior has been blessedly unknown to the person whose story you're stalking. But that' may be about to change. According to TechCrunch, Instagram is testing a new functionality (similar to Snapchat's) that will notify the story's creator when someone takes a screenshot.

In a statement provided to TechCrunch, the social media giant acknowledged the test, saying “we are always testing ways to improve the experience on Instagram and make it easier to share any moment with the people who matter to you.” The tech site surmises that Instagram is running the tests to see whether this has any effect on engagement, i.e., users stop watching Stories as frequently because they can't snoop and share unnoticed. Currently, users are only notified if someone takes a screenshot of a direct message. With this new functionality, there would be a notation next to the user's name who took the screenshot—basically making Stories exactly like Snapchat in this regard, though the actual notification itself will look a bit different.

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People are understandably distressed—and you can count us among them. Any platform changes takes a while to get used to, and we're sure there will be more than a few screenshot notifications we're going to want to immediately erase, kind of like when you're deep in someone's archive and accidentally like an old photo.

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It's unknown if (or when) this feature will roll out to all Instagram users, but you might want to enjoy the sweet freedom of secret screenshots while you can. We're still going to hold out hope for the current status quo.