Facebook-owned photo-sharing app Instagram announced on Twitter announced that previews of IGTV videos would now appear on the main feed of the homepage.
“Now, you can preview IGTV videos in your feed. When there’s a new video from someone you follow, you can tap from your feed to watch the full video in IGTV,” the company tweeted on Thursday.
Since the launch of IGTV, Instagram has been officially pushing the content on the platform in several ways including putting videos in the Explore tab, putting occasional notification banners for new videos and allowing users to share IGTV videos on their own stories.
“With IGTV previews in feed, we’re making it even easier to discover and watch the latest video content from your favorite follows,” Variety quoted an Instagram spokesperson as saying.
Instagram launched the IGTV as a competition to YouTube in June 2018 to enable content creators and influencers to upload videos of up to 10 minutes to 1 hour in length.
Earlier this week, Instagram rolled out Sensitivity Screens in an attempt to reduce exposure of minors to self-harm, provocative, and disturbing content on its platform. The feature blurs concerning pictures and video thumbnails until the user opts in.
Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, while announcing the rollout of “sensitivity screens” in an op-ed he wrote for The Telegraph, expressed grief on the death of a British teenager Molly Russel whose parents blamed Instagram for exposing Molly to self-harm and suicidal content.
Adam Mosseri said Instagram is making necessary changes to its platform.
“We are not where we need to be on self-harm and suicide, and we need to do more to protect the most vulnerable in our community,” he said.
Mosseri said further changes will be made.
“I have a responsibility to get this right,” he said. “We will get better and we are committed to finding and removing this content at scale, and working with experts and the wider industry to find ways to support people when they’re most in need.”
The British government supported the call for changes from the parents after the family of 14-year old Molly Russel found content related to depression and suicide on her Instagram after her death in 2017.
Facebook, which is a parent company of Instagram, said in a statement that experts advice facebook to “allow people to share admissions of self-harm and suicidal thoughts but should not allow people to share content promoting it.”
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