Instagram hopes to promote healthy social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic by unveiling their co-watching feature. This new feature will allow users to look at posts together through video chats. To utilize the feature, users have to go to their Instagram Direct messaging feed, start a video chat and click on the icon on the bottom left of the screen.
In recent weeks, the social media app has taken a number of measures to adapt to the social climate during the pandemic. More recently, they have implemented “Stay At Home” Instagram stories and launched campaigns against the spread of misinformation. Most notably, information about the pandemic can be found in the app’s main feed.
“If posts are rated false by third-party-fact checkers, we remove them from Explore and hashtag pages,” Instagram told The Verge.
“We also remove false claims or conspiracy theories that have been flagged by leading global health organizations and local health authorities as having the potential to cause harm to people who believe them,” they added.
Co-Watching builds on the Facebook Watch feature implemented last year. Moving forward, co-watching will likely remain a feature for months to come on the app.
