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Instagramers rejoice! The social media platform has just announced its newest and most highly demanded feature: a mute button.
In the past, users have been able to mute the Instagram stories of others by tapping and holding a person’s profile icon. Never before, however, was it possible to mute someone’s photos in your main feed.
While unfollows were never particularly pronounced on Instagram, it was still possible for users to cycle through their Followers list and spot defectors- a practice many social media junkies will readily admit to. This setup had serious potential for ruining friendships, and so the less brave continued to remain prisoners to unwanted posts.
No matter who it is that you’re following, if you’re sick of scrolling through their posts on your feed, you are no longer forced to unfollow them. Instead, you are free to mute whomever you wish without them ever knowing.
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Perhaps someone that you follow posts too many cutesy couple pics- mute!
Or your friend shares an excessive amount of aesthetic food photos- mute!
Maybe another user is constantly posting puppy pictures and videos- don’t mute because everyone loves puppies!
Instagram claims that it created the mute feature in order to make the user’s feed feel more personalized, but representatives did acknowledge an obvious public want.
Compared to other social media platforms, Instagram is late to the mute function game. Twitter already has a mute button, and Facebook allows users to either snooze a person’s posts for 30 days or to unfollow without unfriending.
Mute will work by users tapping the three dots in the upper right-hand corner of a post, then selecting ‘Mute’. The options to mute posts or both posts and stories are available.
Muting allows for users to still receive direct messages from that person and to look at their photos on their profile page. Muters will also still receive notifications if the person muted has tagged them in a photo or in the comments. Users can unmute accounts from their profiles.
According to Instagram, it will take a few weeks before the mute button reaches everyone, but take comfort in knowing that you won’t be dealing with those unwanted posts for too much longer.
