You Can Still Send DMs on Instagram
The Claim
Instagram will remove direct messages on the application.
News posted on
Emerging story
A claim that Instagram plans to disable the direct messages feature from its application is doing rounds on social media.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation found the circulating misleading. The claim was first published by Hazem Al-Ruhaily, a technical expert on Twitter. He also posted the claim on his Instagram account, attaining thousands of interactions. Misbar’s team contacted Al-Ruhaily to further investigate the sources of his information, but he did not respond.
Instagram did not issue an official statement announcing the cancellation of the DM feature. It did not even refer to the subject in any of its social media platforms recently. Instagram’s latest reference to the DM related policies dates to February 2021, when it announced that it would start disabling the accounts of people who repeatedly send hateful messages. A step was taken as part of the efforts made to tackle abuse on Instagram.
As an explanatory note, one might suggest a connection between this claim and some server-side issues in Instagram. Throughout the past two days, several users reported a temporary shutdown in their Instagram accounts. Some reports indicated that the shutdown extends to other applications such as Messenger.
Instagram apologized via Twitter for the interruptions and promised to fix the problem.
Still, no reference was made regarding Instagram's intent to disable the DM feature. Therefore, claiming Instagram will cancel the DM feature is at best a misconstruction of the repeated interruptions experienced by its users. Accordingly, Misbar finds the claim misleading.
