After WhatsApp, even Instagram copies Telegram's one-way broadcast feature

Instagram's Broadcast Channels feature will roll out more broadly to users starting this month. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this feature and a rollout plan on his Broadcast Channel on Instagram. Until now, the feature was available for select content creators and celebrities. People can send messages to their followers, and followers can react to those messages and answer polls but can't reply to messages.

Along with text, users can broadcast audio, images, videos, and polls to their followers. This feature will gradually be rolled out to Facebook and Facebook Messenger as well. However, a release timeframe for those platforms hasn't been revealed yet.

Meta, which owns Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is secretly developing a decentralized social media network similar to Twitter rival Mastodon. Reports suggest it will work with the same APIs that power Mastodon, but people can log in using their Instagram profiles.