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Instagram is rolling out a new way for users to respond to others’ Stories — comments.
Previously, when you wanted to respond to a friend’s Story on Instagram, you had to reply with either an emoji reaction or a direct message. Now, you can add a comment to Stories if you’re willing to accept two major restrictions.
Oh hi, now you can leave comments on Stories to show your besties some love 💖 pic.twitter.com/I9du2IdJMk
— Instagram (@instagram) September 3, 2024
First, Instagram will only allow mutual followers to leave comments on Stories. You can only comment on someone’s Story if both of you follow each other. Also, comments on your Stories will only be visible to people who follow you. These restrictions theoretically ensure that only known individuals can comment on Stories, keeping trolls away.
Additionally, Instagram will allow you to manually decide whether to enable or disable the comment feature for each story.
Instagram’s competitor TikTok has had commenting for a very long time, and it’s a signature feature of the platform. Now that Meta has introduced this feature to Instagram, it will be interesting to see when, or if, the feature arrives on Facebook as well.
