MENLO PARK, CA—In an effort to improve user experience, Meta announced Thursday that the next update of Instagram would include helpful labels indicating the point at which a girlfriend stops appearing in the posts of a given account holder. “Starting today, some Instagram users will notice a beta rollout of this new feature, which will appear as a thick black line demarcating the date beyond which a person’s girlfriend is no longer pictured,” said Meta representative Hailey Coogan, noting that all 2.5 billion active users of the social media app would be barred from opting out of the feature. “Our goal is to streamline the primary activity people engage in when they visit Instagram. In addition, we hope to cut down on users accidentally liking posts from five years ago when they are scrutinizing every photo in an account to figure out if someone was single at a particular time.” Asked why Instagram did not simply add a place to indicate relationship status in one’s profile, Coogan acknowledged this would result in people spending no more than a few seconds at a time on the app.
