Monday, November 5, 2018

Instagram is Testing ‘School Stories’ for Students

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Stories has become one of the most popular features for the Facebook-owned Instagram platform, and it’s looking like it may be getting a more focused avenue for students at some point in the future.


According to TechCrunch, citing information shared to the publication by Jane Manchun Wong, Instagram is currently prototyping what’s being called “School Stories”. This would be a feature built for Stories that would be available to students of a particular school to see and contribute to. And in an effort to reduce bullying, the content shared within a School Story would be “manually reviewed to make sure the community is safe”.


As it stands right now, there is no word on when, or even if, Instagram is planning on launching the feature to the public. But, as noted in the original report, there may be some hesitation on launching something like this when bullying is a real issue on school campuses:


“Instagram could still scrap the feature rather than having to risk the harassment issues and invest in moderation. Bullying isn’t always obvious name-calling. It can mean excluding certain kids from gatherings, using inside jokes to belittle people or just purposefully making life look more glamorous than it is. Instagram would have to develop an extraordinarily nuanced rubric for deciding what’s allowed, and do deep training of moderators to make sure they don’t miss anything. The question will be whether the teen engagement is worth the gamble.”


However, Instagram itself is not a stranger to student-leaning features. The platform did test a group feature for college students earlier this year, for instance. And then, back in 2015, there was something similar to the “School Story” feature, what was called “Our Campus Story”, but that didn’t last long at all.


Will Instagram try it again? What do you think? Should the platform launch School Stories?


[via TechCrunch; @wongmjane]

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