Instagram Drops Terrible New Feature After Numerous User Complaints

I grew up on the walls of my friend’s Facebook pages, and have seen more than my fair share of copy-and-paste instructions meant to help you avoid having your data stolen or your profile removed. They’re usually nonsense, but I know plenty of folks over 50, so I’ve seen them shared regardless. It’s to the point that, if I see someone share a large block of text that starts with “Not everyone will read this” or some such silliness, I’ll ignore it. But this weekend, I saw a large number of people whom I trust offering the same warning.

Two things were different here. One, I mainly saw this all play out in Instagram stories. Two, the blocks of text actually came with instructions. Many of my friends posted a notice to go into your settings and turn off features that were connected to a new AI image generator called Muse, which would allow people to use pictures from others whose accounts were public. Public or not, the idea was as gross as it sounds, and people were right to complain. The surprising thing is that Meta listened.

The parent company announced after the outrage that they would remove Muse altogether. “Earlier this week, we announced that one way for people to generate images in Meta AI is by @-mentioning public Instagram accounts that they want to reference,” Meta explained in a statement, according to Deadline. “Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control over whether their public content could be referenced in this way. We’ve heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.”

It likely helps that users weren’t the only ones who complained. Mega agency CAA also wasn’t too fond of the new feature, nor was the union SAG-AFTRA. Given that AI usage was at the forefront of the last studio negotiations, that isn’t too surprising. Still, it’s nice to see such large entities go to bat for something that will also affect normal folks. I know a lot of actors and other creatives, so I wasn’t surprised to see the complaints, but this could have been just as detrimental for folks who don’t intentionally put themselves out there.

That’s also the bleak kind of double-edged sword when it comes to social media. A lot of folks I know use it to promote themselves and their work, but plenty of people just want to share pictures of their dogs and/or kids with friends and family. They want to find funny accounts that post silly jokes, and they might not think about how other people are viewing their account (or what they are using it for). It would be easy for them not to even be cognizant of something like this, so it’s good that folks are staying vigilant in their resistance.

Let’s be honest, this isn’t the last shady thing that Meta is going to attempt.