Instagram is testing a Discord-like ‘Community Chats’ feature

Instagram is working on a “community chat” feature so people can form groups of up to 250 on the platform. The feature was spotted in the backend by developer Alessandro Paluzzi who follows Meta’s apps closely.

The feature is expected to work like Discord where individual users can create chats about certain subjects and can dictate who joins. Group creators will then have the choice to select admins who will then moderate the conversations so they follow Instagram’s community guidelines. They can also remove group members and even messages that they feel violate policies.

Meta will also be keeping an eye on community chats to ensure they aren’t harmful which can usually be the case with large groups on platforms.

Group creators also have the option to keep the group exclusive. 

While Instagram already has the broadcast channels feature, where online creators post updates, community chats will just help them interact with other people given they can’t share their own posts.

Instagram responded to the report saying they were just testing it internally at the moment and couldn’t confirm if it would be launched outside.