Instagram Instants can send your photo to more people than you think

Instagram launched Instants globally a few hours ago, and it seems like a lot of people are already getting caught off guard by how it works.

The feature lives in the bottom-right corner of your DM inbox as a small stack of photos. Tap the camera, take a shot, and it goes out. Simple enough. Except that the photo does not go to just one person.

According to Instagram’s own announcement, Instants are shared with either your Close Friends list or your mutual followers, meaning everyone who follows you back. Not a single friend. Everyone.

Another huge problem is that, unlike traditional posts, where you tap the camera icon to take a picture and then confirm whether to upload it or not, Instants just sends the picture straight away. So as soon as you capture a photo, it’s sent to your Close Friends or mutual followers, depending on what’s selected.

One Reddit thread from earlier today has close to a hundred comments from users who thought they were replying to a friend’s Instant and ended up posting a random photo of themselves to their entire mutuals list. “TURNS OUT EVERYONE CAN FU****G SEE THAT PIC,” the original poster wrote, pretty much highlighting the issue.

Several people said they panicked and deactivated their accounts just to stop others from seeing the photo. Others took six accidental shots of themselves, or sent a pic of their feet, or photographed themselves mid-scroll in bad lighting.

Instagram does include an undo button that appears right after you post, so you can pull it back fast if you catch it in time. You can also delete an Instant from your archive later, and according to Instagram, that unsends it for anyone who has not opened it yet. No guarantees for anyone who already has.

It’s worth pointing out that Instants are not the same as Stories. They disappear after the recipient views them, and you cannot upload from your camera roll or add filters. It is designed to be raw and in-the-moment, which is fine in theory, but only if you actually know who is on the receiving end.

If you want to turn it off entirely, we have a guide on that here. More people are probably going to need it.

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