, Columnist
Instagram Forgot the Lessons of Internet Abuses
Its new video venture seems ill-prepared to weed out inappropriate content.
We’ve seen this movie before.
Photographer: Alexander Koerner/Getty Images
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Facebook Inc. didn’t learn from the last two years of internet scandals.
The company’s Instagram app announced on Wednesday a YouTube-like video hangout called IGTV, which I suspect is going to be a hit. Instagram has quickly become a go-to digital home base for younger people and is on its way to becoming Facebook's next huge advertising money-minting machine. Analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets recently estimated that Instagram’s revenue will top $22 billion in 2020, or about one-quarter of Facebook’s total forecasted advertising sales for that year.