Meta is on a mission to turn its social apps into a hub of all kinds of content as well chatter. The next step towards that goal could be Community Chats on Instagram, which could open the doors for the same kind of group chatter as you would find across Telegram channels and Discord.
Code sleuth Alessandro Paluzzi has shared visual assets of the in-development feature sharing some details on how it might work. These chat groups will be able to host up to 250 people at once, and will be open to all users to join and share messages among the community.
It won’t be a no-holds-barred chat zone though. Community Chats will allow creators to select admins for moderating the conversation. These admins will be able to remove messages that violate conduct policies, and will exercise a similar level of control over ejecting members, as well.
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Going a step further, Instagram will also be checking the ongoing community chats against its own content guidelines. However, it’s unclear what kind of disciplinary action it might take, not just against members, but also the entire community chat in itself.
Once a community chat is established, the creator will be offered the choice to keep it gated so that only approved users can join the chat. Moreover, just like broadcast channels, users will be able to advertise their Community Chats on the profile page and channel.
Why this could go either way
For now, the only community-based feature available on Instagram is the broadcast channels system. Primarily targeted at creators and influencers, they allow posting of content updates in the form of text, videos, and pictures.
For boosting engagement, poll and question updates are available, too. There’s also an option to invite another creator to post live updates as a guest in the broadcast channel. Exclusive channels can also be created for subscribers, but do keep in mind that broadcast channels are limited to Professional accounts only.
The only limitation is that aside from reacting and engaging with polls or questions, channel members can’t share their own posts. That’s where Community Chats come into the picture, allowing fans and followers to share their views in the same way as they would in a Telegram channel or Discord community.
The biggest challenge, however, is going to be moderation. Meta has already loosened some of its content moderation policies, especially around sensitive topics such as LGBTQ dialog, which experts have criticized ever since the shift was made.
Enforcing such policies won’t be easy, and it would take strict vigilance from community members to keep the community chat in order. Another issue is the proliferation of community chats engaged in problematic discourse, especially when these groups take an invite-only approach.
Meta has received a fair amount of criticism for allowing hateful material inciting violence and other problematic ideas across Facebook and Instagram, despite all the material being out there in the public. It would be interesting to see whether Instagram fares any better at preventing Community Chats from spiraling into utter chaos.