Stealing Snapchat features seems to be the norm for Facebook. The latest is a new feature that Instagram is currently testing that identifies users who take screenshots of public Instagram Stories. It should be known by now that Instagram already identifies users that take a screenshot of a photo or video that’s sent as a direct message.
Instagram has already acknowledged with TechCrunch that it was testing the feature. The company is now flagging some users who are guilty of screenshotting stories as they are already receiving pop-up warnings from the app that states rather ominously,
“Next time you take a screenshot or screen recording, the person who posted the story will be able to see it.” See below
chose insta stories over snapchat stories cos of the screenshot thing but…. whats this instagram pic.twitter.com/tOi2rP7cWb
— 경자?❤️ (@dyomongi) February 9, 2018
How to tell the ‘screenshotter’
When someone screenshots your story, a circle shutter icon will display next to the name of the account that has screen grabbed your content. Story owners otherwise won’t be alerted when someone takes a screenshot — they can only tell after manually checking the “seen by” list.
PSA: How you get notified on Instagram when someone took a screenshot of your Stories pic.twitter.com/Iua2QeyskF
— iz reading On the Edge of Scandal ? (@readbyher) February 11, 2018
The tweets above, its clear that some users indicated they had switched from Snapchat to Instagram because they wanted to get away from screenshotting alerts. Instagram is likely testing how people respond to the new notices and may decide to never roll-out the feature to all users, or perhaps change its behavior.
