Instagram archived story clawback

Instagram has evolved so much since its early days as a photo-sharing application. I look back fondly on the candid, poorly edited photos people used to post. There were no influencers, brand collabs, or marketing schemes. People were simply there for a good time.

These nascent, happy days of the internet have unfortunately passed us by, but many of the platforms that contributed to the mass adoption of native applications remain. Instagram has posts, reels, stories, and now many creator tools that help people run entire businesses on the app.

One of the main ways I still use Instagram is for messaging. Some of my friends regularly send me stories and posts. Often, I am late on checking what people sent and I end up missing the story. Other times, I see a story and want to show my wife later, only to find it has expired (stories only last 24 hours).

I’d venture to guess this is a feature, not a bug. Instagram's product leads want people to be incentivized to check the app regularly. Content being created and destroyed every 24 hours is an ingenious way to drive return visits to the app. That said, what if there was a way that you could “dig through” someone else’s archives to find an old story?

When you boil it down, an archived story you can still view is just a post. However, positioning it as content that has been “archived” that you can surreptitiously view does make the experience more intriguing (and invasive).

Have a friend who misses stories when you send them on Insta? Send them this newsletter.

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