Instagram adds a mute button, countless friendships can continue safely

Instagram is rolling out a mute button to its app, enabling users to hide posts by certain accounts without unfollowing them. According to Instagram, this change will “make your feed even more personalised to what matters to you”.

Users can choose to mute posts, stories or both, and can do so from an individual post, a profile or an entry in an Instagram story. Muted accounts will still be visible by visiting their profile page, and comments or posts that users are tagged in will still generate notifications, even if they have muted the user responsible.

Accounts will not be notified that they have been muted, and users can unmute and remute to their hearts content. The function could prove essential as we head into summer vacation season, especially for those of us who arent taking an exotic vacation anywhere this year. It also comes as Instagram owner Facebook is looking for additional tools to prevent harassment and abuse on its social networks.

Instagram havent clarified whether muting will prevent promoted posts from appearing in the feeds of targeted users, which could reduce the potential scale of marketing campaigns on Instagram, but could also see their effectiveness increase.