How To Opt-Out Of Having Your Instagram Stories Shared With Random Strangers

I really like Instagram’s Stories feature. I like to tag businesses I’m at in stories, and friends, and probably spend way too much time during the day looking at what the people I follow are up to (and sharing) on the service. This week Instagram added a few new features to Stories, specifically ones that highlight stories by location or hashtag.

With the new adds, you might see something at the top of the Explore tab like “New York” that will include a number of public posts from New York or #brunch for pics that people shared and included the hashtag. It will be right beside your friend’s posts in the top section.

If you’re looking to have your Instagram discovered by strangers, then that’s probably great news. More people will see your posts than would have otherwise.

That said, if you have a public account just so friends and friends of friends can all see your posts, then you might want to opt-out of having some of your stories shared with the masses.

Stories will only be shared if your account is public to being with. They’ll be shared by default whenever you use a location or hashtag sticker, so that’s something to keep in mind going forward.

The only want to really opt out is to make your account private. However, you can opt-out on a per-photo basis.

To do it, go into the viewer list for your story. You’ll see the location or hashtag at the top of that viewer list. Click on the X button beside it and then click “Hide” to remove your post from that shared story.

Inversely, if you’ve been trying to build up your Instagram follower count, you might want to consider adding location info and hashtag stickers going forward to improve your reach.


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


Leave a Reply