Walden Perry
Thoughts on Walden


Instagram Selectively Breaking Basic OS Features

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I've been reluctantly using Meta apps again for social purposes lately. Facebook for their Marketplace section, and Instagram for some people for whom it's their preferred messenger. I ran into something that really shocked me on Instagram today.

Instagram seems to be blocking copy and paste on the in-app messaging.

Instagram DM text box that does not allow copy and paste

You can't see in the screenshot, but I'm furiously tapping my phone

I thought I was going crazy at first (did I forget how to paste on a phone?!?), but then I went and tried a bunch of other fields in the app. Everywhere else seems to work perfectly fine.

Several fields in Instagram where they allow copy and paste

Does everyone just accept this? I searched around a bit and there are a few people complaining as far back as 2022. At least you can still access Instagram messages on the browser, so I logged in on my Mac where Meta can't stop me from pasting a link.