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Instagram has removed the “Following” tab from its Activity feed.
The what?
The “Following” tab, which you may have swiped to by accident, or probably never even realized was there. Unless you’re a creepy stalker.
Previously, users could navigate to the Activity page (the heart icon) to find likes, follows, and comments friends made on other accounts.
In its latest update, though, the photo-sharing platform scrapped that option, leaving only your own activity on display.
Vishal Shah, Instagram’s head of product, told BuzzFeed News that the company suspects many users didn’t even know the feature existed—and those who did rarely visited it.
“People didn’t always know that their activity is surfacing,” Shah said. “So you have a case where it’s not serving the use case you built it for, but it’s also causing people to be surprised when their activity is showing up.”
Instagram launched the “Following” feature in 2011 as a way to discover new content. After all, if your friends like it, you might, too.
But the hidden function never really caught on (except, perhaps, among Peeping Toms), and Instagram’s Explore tab has emerged as the primary means of discovery.
“Simplicity was the driving factor,” Shah told BuzzFeed, which noted that since app founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger abandoned ship last year, the platform has gotten “busier.”
Go Phish
The social network also introduced a new program to help users identify phishing emails claiming to be from the Facebook-owned firm.
The account security feature allows anyone to confirm whether a message is genuine before sharing information or clicking potentially dangerous links.
Visit “Emails from Instagram” in the Security settings to find every memo the service has sent over the last 14 days. You can be sure letters sorted into the “security emails” category are legitimate, while those in the “other” folder may be a phishing scam.
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