Overview

• Instagram has enforced a new policy requiring public accounts to have at least 1,000 followers for Live streaming.
• The eligibility change rolled out silently on August 1–2 across private and public profiles without prior warning.
• Meta says the threshold aligns Live with TikTok’s requirements and will reduce infrastructure costs and low-quality streams.
• Industry estimates indicate up to 1.7 billion of Instagram’s roughly 2 billion users are now blocked from going live.
• Impacted creators are voicing frustration on social media and some are weighing the privacy trade-offs of switching to public profiles.