Instagram's New Live Rule Frustrates Small Creators

Instagram has decided upon a notable change in policy, with immediate effect constraining its Live broadcast feature to accounts that are public and have at least 1,000 followers.

Meta confirmed this change with TechCrunch and it represents a change to the earlier open-access approach where anyone could go live regardless of the number of followers or follower privacy options.

The new one puts Instagram on par with its rising rival such as TikTok which requires at least 1,000 followers to live-stream.

The latest policy has raised general discontentment among smaller creators and one-off users who used Live to interface audience in real time. When users now choose to use Live even when they have failed to fit the criteria, they get a notification:

• Instagram Restricts Live Feature to Public Accounts With 1,000+ Followers
• Small Creators Slam Instagram’s New Live Policy as Barrier to Growth
• Instagram’s Live Rule Change Sparks Backlash, Promotes Commercial Interests

Your account is not currently supported to be on live.  “Your account is no longer eligible for Live. Only public accounts with 1,000 followers or more will be able to create live videos.” This limitation is regarded as a setback to up-and-coming creators, small enterprises and common users who were utilizing the offering to have personal interaction, non mainstream groups or word-of-mouth positioning.

Although with Instagram this change has not been formally explained, the opinion of specialists shows that it is supposed to improve the quality of the content and mitigate the cost of infrastructure. Live transmission requires a lot of bandwidth and limiting it to accounts with existing audiences could be more stable, and it would prioritize monetized content. But some critics say the move satisfies commercial interests, more than inclusivity and may create problems hampering creativity and genuine interactions. Social media analysts have raised fears that the policy would prompt the users to purchase fake followers to reach the threshold at the expense of building actual communities.

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The upgrade has received varied reaction. The bigger accounts have the additional advantage of having a lesser competitor, and more exposure, whereas smaller accounts do not experience such growth. Most users have been using platforms such as X to discuss the disappointment, some saying the move is a push towards commercialization.