Instagram has come under scathing user criticism for rolling out two new features—Instagram Map and Repost—that some users are claiming have been ripped off from other social networking sites. The features, in Instagram’s new bid to add a little more social interaction to the site, have been roundly criticized as not very original and as cluttering up the user interface.
Repost is a feature that allows users to repost other people’s public Reels and feed posts to their own account in a new “Reposts” tab. It may be beneficial for creators to have more visibility, but users see it as taking X’s (once Twitter’s) retweet feature. Critics claim that Instagram is copying features from competitors like it did with adding features such as Stories borrowed from Snapchat and Reels borrowed from TikTok.
The second disputed update is the Instagram Map, a location-sharing feature that shows where your friends are sharing from and enables users to find popular locations like restaurants or party spots. While the feature is opt-in and has privacy controls, the concern about unwanted public exposure of the location still exists. Teen accounts will be further guarded with parental controls, but the issue is that it is still privacy intrusive.
Besides these, Instagram is catching the musketeers tab to feature what your musketeers have posted or liked. While it aims to make the connections more intimate, druggies can also see further of their musketeers’ exertion by dereliction, which raises farther issues of sequestration.
The response online has been swift and highly critical. Facebook users on other platforms like X and Reddit have panned the updates, with some referring to Instagram as a “TikTok clone” and others inquiring as to how to disable or delete the new repost feature. The users complain that the feature is easy to tap by mistake, leading to messy feeds and a subpar user experience.
Although Instagram is looking to make people share and find even more, innovations such as these are being viewed as another indication that the app is not innovating but trending. Whether or not users will join in—or the app will be abandoned—only time will tell.
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