If you find an interesting post in your Instagram feed, you can share it with your followers in one of two ways; the Repost app, or by sharing it to your story. The Repost app fills a gap that Instagram refuses to address; resharing posts. Instagram doesn’t let users share a post from their feed to their own account. They can however share a post to their Instagram story. This means that if your account is public, anyone who follows you can also share your posts to their own stories. If you don’t like the idea of your posts being shared this way, you can disable resharing to stories on Instagram.
If you don’t know already, Instagram gives users excellent control over their account, their content, and notifications. Users can customize almost every aspect of everything.
Open Instagram and go to your profile tab. Tap the hamburger icon at the top right. A navigation drawer will open with a gear button at the bottom. Tap the gear button to go to your Options screen. On the Options screen, you will see a ‘Resharing to Stories’ option. Tap it, and turn the switch off to disable resharing to stories.
When someone who follows you attempts to share your post to their story, the share to story option simply will not show up in the share menu. They can still take a screenshot of your post, and then share it to their own story, or even their own account. Instagram doesn’t exactly discourage screenshots. In fact, even Snapchat now allows them so remember that any time you disable sharing options, a screenshot is still possible.
This setting will not have any impact on your ability to share posts to your stories. If a user has disabled the option for their post you won’t be able to share their posts but other than that, there isn’t anything stopping you from resharing posts to your story.
If your Instagram account is private, this setting isn’t something you need to worry about. The users that follow you will not be able to share your posts to their own stories. The screenshot option will still be there.
If you’re disabling resharing to stories because you’re worried about your content being stolen, you should know that the reshared post is duly credited to the person who made it. Stories also tend to expire after a day so the time on your post’s life is short. Lastly, you can delete a post and it will no longer appear in anyone’s story.
