Although often admired for its success and influence, Instagram has also been criticized for negatively affecting teens' mental health, its policy and interface changes, its alleged censorship, and illegal and inappropriate content uploaded by users.Instagram began development in San Francisco as Burbn, a mobile check-in app created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger.

[19] Joshua Kushner was the second largest investor in Instagram's Series B fundraising round, leading his investment firm, Thrive Capital, to double its money after the sale to Facebook.

The change was made official in October, with head of product Vishal Shah stating that the feature was underused and that some users were "surprised" when they realized their activity was being surfaced in this manner.

According to Instagram, they pushed forward the launch of Co-Watching in order to meet the demand for virtually connecting with friends and family due to social distancing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[191] It is similar in functionality to the Chinese video-sharing service TikTok, with a focus on allowing users to record short videos set to pre-existing sound clips from other posts.

[201][202][203] The feature received a major update in September 2015, adding conversation threading and making it possible for users to share locations, hashtag pages, and profiles through private messages directly from the news feed.

[218][219] In response to criticism that it copied functionality from Snapchat, CEO Kevin Systrom told Recode that "Day One: Instagram was a combination of Hipstamatic, Twitter [and] some stuff from Facebook like the 'Like' button.

Obtaining the blue verified badge typically requires meeting certain criteria set by Instagram, such as being notable, authentic, unique, complete, and adhering to the platform's terms of service and community guidelines.

[272][271][273] In November 2018, Instagram added the ability for business accounts to add product links directing users to a purchase page or to save them to a "shopping list".

[287] It was reported that these changes were primarily intended to discourage third-party clients replicating the entire Instagram experience (due to increasing monetization of the service), and security reasons (such as preventing abuse by automated click farms, and the hijacking of accounts).

[302][303] However, in December 2021, Adam Mosseri, in a Senate hearing on child safety issues, stated that the company is developing a version of the feed that would show user posts in chronological order.

[305] Since 2017, Instagram has employed the ability to reduce the prominence of accounts ("shadowbanning") it believes may be generating non-genuine engagement and spam (including excessive use of unneeded hashtags), preventing posts from appearing in search results and in the app's Explore section.

[426] In October 2021, CNN published an article and interviews on two young women, Ashlee Thomas and Anastasia Vlasova, saying Instagram endangered their lives due to it having toxic effects on their diets.

[427] In October 2023, 42 states from the US filed a lawsuit against Instagram and parent company Meta, accusing them of contributing to a youth mental health crisis due to the addictive nature of the platforms.

The lawsuit claims that Meta and its Instagram unit repeatedly misled the public about the dangers of its platforms and knowingly induced young children and teenagers into addictive and compulsive social media use.

The system is built using a Facebook-developed deep learning algorithm known as DeepText (first implemented on the social network to detect spam comments), which utilizes natural-language processing techniques, and can also filter by user-specified keywords.

The participants of the study included actress Amber Heard, journalist Bryony Gordon, television presenter Rachel Riley, activist Jamie Klingler and magazine founder Sharan Dhaliwal.

[443] In August 2017, reports surfaced that a bug in Instagram's developer tools had allowed "one or more individuals" to gain access to the contact information, specifically email addresses and phone numbers, of several high-profile verified accounts, including its most followed user, Selena Gomez.

[447] The Verge wrote that cybersecurity firm RepKnight had found contact information for multiple actors, musicians, and athletes,[446] and singer Selena Gomez's account was used by the hackers to post naked photos of her ex-boyfriend Justin Bieber.

[451] On December 17, 2012, Instagram announced a change to its Terms of Service policy, adding the following sentence:[452] To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.There was no option for users to opt out of the changed Terms of Service without deleting their accounts before the new policy went into effect on January 16, 2013.

[453] The move garnered severe criticism from users,[454][455] prompting Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom to write a blog post one day later, announcing that they would "remove" the offending language from the policy.

[461] On February 26, 2019, the New York Post released an article stating that the FTC had discovered a memo authored by a senior Facebook official, revealing that the purpose behind the acquisition of Instagram was to remove a potential rival.

As noted by the technology media, the incident occurred at the same time parent company Facebook was under scrutiny for its algorithms and advertising campaigns being used for offensive and negative purposes.

In 2013, the BBC discovered that users, mostly located in the United States, were posting images of drugs they were selling, attaching specific hashtags, and then completing transactions via instant messaging applications such as WhatsApp.

[475] In October 2013, Instagram deleted the account of Canadian photographer Petra Collins after she posted a photo of herself in which a very small area of pubic hair was visible above the top of her bikini bottom.

"[477] Nick Drewe of The Daily Beast wrote a report the same month focusing on hashtags that users are unable to search for, including #sex, #bubblebutt, and #ballsack, despite allowing #faketits, #gunsforsale and #sexytimes, calling the discrepancy "nonsensical and inconsistent".

[478] Similar incidents occurred in January 2015, when Instagram deleted Australian fashion agency Sticks and Stones Agency's account because of a photograph including pubic hair sticking out of bikini bottoms,[479] and March 2015, when artist and poet Rupi Kaur's photos of menstrual blood on clothing were removed, prompting a rallying post on her Facebook and Tumblr accounts with the text "We will not be censored", gaining over 11,000 shares.

[499] One exception was in January 2020, when Instagram and its parent company, Facebook, Inc., removed posts "that voice support for slain Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani to comply with US sanctions".

[501][502][503] Like many social media sites, Instagram employs a combination of automated algorithms, user reports and human review to identify and remove illegal content such as child abuse and encouragement of terrorism.

[504] Although the U.S. government has little direct power to force social media sites to remove specific content, Instagram has on occasion done so voluntarily,[499] especially to avoid being seen as aiding the spread of fake news.