When Instagram Stories released its Poll Sticker last October, the initial excitement — oh cool, an easy way to survey friends — was quickly replaced with horror. Yes, the person conducting the poll can see how their followers voted, and yes, they might resent you for voting the “wrong” way. To be fair, Instagram didn't set out to deceive users: The app was transparent about how polls worked from the start.
Given the confusion, however, it would be irresponsible to introduce Instagram’s newest Stories feature, a Questions Sticker, without a must-read warning label: The person asking the question can see how you answer and even share your answer with their followers. You've been warned.
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That being said, here are the basics for using the new Questions Sticker: Start by opening the Stories camera. After taking a photo or video, tap the sticker icon in the upper right-hand corner. Select the Question Sticker and type your question. Your followers will be able to write an answer up to three lines long, making Questions a much more substantive sticker than the Poll or Emoji Slider.
To see how people respond, swipe up on your Story to look at the list of viewers. You can tap a friend's reply to share it in a new Story post, though the identity of friend will remain hidden — only their answer, not their photo or username, will be shown. Of course, your friend could always screenshot the results, which do show the username and photo, and share that image as a Story post, so make sure you're okay with your answer becoming public.
One possible outcome of the new sticker is fewer standalone messages filling your Direct inbox, since friends can answer within Stories instead. Still, if you want to respond to someone individually, rather than blasting their response out to all your followers, you'll need to DM them separately.
The Questions Sticker will start rolling out to Android and iOS today.