Instagram unveils new video service in challenge to YouTube

Facebook's Instagram service is loosening its restraints on video in an attempt to lure younger viewers away from YouTube when they're looking for something to watch on their smartphones.

In this Tuesday, June 19, 2018, photo Kevin Systrom, CEO and co-founder of Instagram, prepares for Wednesday's announcement about IGTV in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

The expansion announced Wednesday, dubbed IGTV, will increase Instagram's video time limit from one minute to 10 minutes for most users. Accounts with large audiences will be able to go as long as an hour.

Video will be available through Instagram or a new app called IGTV. The video will eventually give Facebook more opportunities to sell advertising.

It's the latest instance in which Instagram has ripped a page from a rival's playbook in an effort to preserve its status as a cool place for young people to share and view content. In this case, Instagram is mimicking Google's YouTube. Before, Facebook and Instagram have copied Snapchat — another magnet for teens and young adults.

Instagram, now nearly 8 years old, is moving further from its roots as a photo-sharing service as it dives headlong into longer-form video.

In this Tuesday, June 19, 2018, photo Kevin Systrom, CEO and co-founder of Instagram, prepares for Wednesday's announcement about IGTV in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

The initiative comes as parent company Facebook struggles to attract teens, while also dealing with a scandal that exposed its leaky controls for protecting users' personal information.

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom told The Associated Press that he hopes IGTV will emerge as a hub of creativity for relative unknowns who turn into internet sensations with fervent followings among teens and young adults.

That is what's already happening on YouTube, which has become the world's most popular video outlet since Google bought it for $1.76 billion nearly 12 years ago. YouTube now boasts 1.8 billion users.

Instagram, which Facebook bought for $1 billion six years ago, now has 1 billion users, up from 800 million nine months ago.

In this Tuesday, June 19, 2018, photo Kevin Systrom, CEO and co-founder of Instagram, prepares for Wednesday's announcement about IGTV in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

More importantly, 72 percent of U.S. kids ranging from 13 to 17 years old use Instagram, second to YouTube at 85 percent, according to the Pew Research Center. Only 51 percent of people in that group now use Facebook, down from 71 percent from a similar Pew survey in 2014-15.

That trend appears to be one of the reasons that Facebook is "hedging its bets" by opening Instagram to the longer-form videos typically found on YouTube, said analyst Paul Verna of the research firm eMarketer.

Besides giving Instagram another potential drawing card, longer clips are more conducive for video ads lasting from 30 seconds to one minute. Instagram doesn't currently allow video ads, but Systrom said it eventually will. When the ads come, Instagram intends to share revenue with the videos' creators — just as YouTube already does.

"We want to make sure they make a living because that is the only way it works in the long run," Systrom said.

In this Tuesday, June 19, 2018, photo Kevin Systrom, CEO and co-founder of Instagram, prepares for Wednesday's announcement about IGTV in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

The ads also will help Facebook sustain its revenue growth. Total spending on online video ads in the U.S. is expected to rise from nearly $18 billion this year to $27 billion in 2021, according to eMarketer.

Lele Pons, a YouTube sensation who also has amassed 25 million followers on Instagram, plans to launch a new cooking show on IGTV in hopes of increasing her audience and eventually generating more revenue. "It's like Coca-Cola and Pepsi," she said. "You will never know what you like better unless you try both."

IGTV's programming format will consist exclusively of vertical video designed to fill the entire screen of smartphones — the devices that are emerging as the main way younger people watch video. By contrast, most YouTube videos fill only a portion of the screen unless the phone is tilted horizontally.

In this Tuesday, June 19, 2018, photo Kevin Systrom, CEO and co-founder of Instagram, prepares for Wednesday's announcement about IGTV in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Snapchat began featuring vertical video before Instagram, another example of its penchant for copying rivals.

But Systrom sees it differently. "This is acknowledging vertical video is the future and we want the future to come more quickly, so we built IGTV."

LONDON (AP) — The European Union said Tuesday that it's investigating Facebook and Instagram for suspected violations of the bloc's digital rulebook, including not doing enough to protect users from foreign disinformation ahead of EU-wide elections.

The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said it's opening formal proceedings into whether parent company Meta Platforms breached the Digital Services Act, a sweeping set of regulations designed to protect internet users and clean up social media platforms under threat of hefty fines worth up to 6% of annual revenue.

European authorities are scrambling to safeguard elections amid official warnings that Russia is seeking to meddle with the vote in June, when citizens of the bloc's 27 nations pick lawmakers for the European Parliament.

The investigation includes an urgent request for Meta to provide information about its move to discontinue a key tool for monitoring elections.

“We have a well established process for identifying and mitigating risks on our platforms," Meta said in a statement. "We look forward to continuing our cooperation with the European Commission and providing them with further details of this work.”

Meta is being scrutinized “for suspected breach of DSA obligations to protect integrity of elections," European Commissioner Thierry Breton said in a social media post.

The Commission said it's looking into whether Meta is doing enough to curb the spread of “deceptive advertisements, disinformation campaigns and coordinated inauthentic behaviour” that could pose a risk to “electoral processes” and consumer protection.

Officials said they suspected Meta's content moderation system for advertisements was inadequate, allowing ads made with generative AI including deepfakes to exploited by malicious foreign actors seeking to meddle in elections even as the company makes money from them.

Experts worry that new generative AI systems could be used to disrupt the many elections being held around the world this year, by supercharging the ability to spread disinformation at scale.

The EU also suspects that Facebook and Instagram might be reducing the visibility in recommendation feeds of political content from accounts that pump out a lot of it - a practice known as shadowbanning - and not being transparent about it with users, which would violate the DSA.

A third concern is Meta's decision to phase out Crowdtangle, a tool used by researchers, journalists and civil society groups for real-time monitoring of trending social media posts including during elections. The Commission is giving Meta five days to respond with information on how it will remedy the lack of such a tool.

The Commission is also investigating whether Meta's mechanism for users to flag illegal content is good enough under the DSA, because it suspects it's neither easy to access nor user-friendly.

Brussels has been cracking down on tech companies since the DSA took effect last year, opening investigations into social media sites TikTok and X and ecommerce platform AliExpress. TikTok bowed to EU pressure last week and halted a reward feature on its new app after the Commission started demanding answers about it.

FILE - The Facebook logo is seen on a cell phone in Boston, USA, Oct. 14, 2022. The European Union said Tuesday April 30, 2024 that it's scrutinizing Facebook and Instagram over a range of suspected violations of the bloc's digital rulebook, including not doing enough to protect users from foreign disinformation ahead of EU-wide elections. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)