Instagram Instants - what's the story behind it?

Abhigyan wrote about a new Instagram feature called ‘Instants’ on his blog. It’s some kind of side project from Meta. Here’s how it works:At first, it looked like an imitation of BeReal; the user interface was just a squircle viewfinder and a button to click a picture. But the concept of Instants is even simpler: 1. Take a picture at any time you want, and as many as you want. 2. It is instantly sent to all your “Friends”, without any extra editing. 3. You can look at other people’s Instants “once”, and either react to them with an emoji or leave a reply. I’ll have you note that “Friends” here is referring to people you follow, that follow you back. I’ve written it in quotes because this is the first time I’ve seen Instagram refer to mutual following as “friendship” on their app. But yeah, there’s still an option to set “Close Friends” like you would on an Instagram story or a note.Fair enough. Sounds innocent. But it's Meta! Maybe I'm biased, but I don't associate this company with…