Instagram will now allow users to send direct messages (DMs) on the web. The company has rolled out the feature to a small group of people as a part of the testing process. This is likely to be useful to businesses and influencers who spend a lot of time in sending DMs or replying to them. According to the Facebook-owned photo and video sharing platform, it will ‘continue to iterate’ on this during the test.
Just like on the app, user will be able to create new groups and start a chat from the DM screen or a profile page. What’s more, users can event double-tap to like a message, share photos from the desktop, and see the number of unread messages. If you enable desktop DM notifications, you’ll be able to receive them in browser you’re accessing the platform. For those who don’t know, another Facebook-owned app WhatsApp already has web support.
Meanwhile, former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos has criticised the company for extending the DM support to the web. He argued that the move is against Facebook’s goal of bringing end-to-end encrypted compatibility between Facebook app, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
‘Nobody has ever built a trustworthy web-based E2EE messenger, and I was expecting them to drop web support in FB Messenger. Right hand versus left?,” Stamos tweeted. He said that the security researchers haven’t been able to figure out a secure way to store cryptographic secrets in JavaScript -- the programming language used to create Instagram. ‘The second major issue is the model by which code on the web is distributed, which is directly from the vendor in a customizable fashion. This means that inserting a backdoor for one specific user is much much easier than in the mobile app paradigm,’ he added.
???? SlowMo
— Instagram (@instagram) 10 January 2020
???? Echo
????♀️ Duo
Boomerang has new creative twists that'll make you say yaaassssss. Try them all out today. pic.twitter.com/wp0A71RefL
The news comes a few days after Instagram introduced three new options to Boomerang Stories: SlowMo, Echo, and Duo. Users can access them in the Instagram Stories camera. While SlowMo slows down the videos to half their original speed, Echo creates a double vision effect, and Duo adds a texturized effect. Users can also trim and adjust the length of recorded Boomerang videos.
