Instagram removing option to share posts in Stories for some users

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Instagram is taking away a central feature of stories for some of its users.

Select people are seeing a message in their app that tells them Instagram is “testing a change to sharing to stories”.

The change means that users won’t be able to share posts from their own and others’ feeds onto their stories.

In the time since Stories became central to the Instagram app, that has become a key way of highlighting new posts on the traditional feed. Adding a post into a story means that users can click through and interact with it as normal, without hoping that the post will be selected by Instagram’s algorithm.

The company said that the feature was being rolled out after feedback from its users.

“We hear from our community that they want to see fewer feed posts in stories,” a message that shows to affected users reads.

“During this test, you won’t be able to add a feed post to your story.”

Before the test, sharing posts to stories was actively encouraged by the Instagram app. If users click to “share” a specific post, they are given the option to send it to friends or “add post to your story” – which is highlighted as the top button.

Instagram gave no detail on why users had objected to such posts, and therefore why it was being removed.

The feature does mean that posts are regularly duplicated, for better or worse, with users seeing them repeatedly in various stories, or in a story post and then on the feed.

But as such it has also been a vital way for businesses, activists and others to highlight specific posts that might otherwise be missed.

The feature is in testing for now. Instagram pushes out a variety of changes to select users – including, in the past, complete redesigns of the feed itself – many of which do not arrive with users more broadly.