Hi, my suggestion for the CLOSE FRIENDS features on the Stories. There are many instances when we want to share our stories with only selected people, which are highlighted as close friends in the stories. This clearly means that those “CLOSE FRIENDS” clearly know that we’re sharing our story with selected people and hiding our posts from few, which sometimes creates awkwardness as well as doubtfulness (though, they might also feel privileged sometimes :p) amongst some of the followers. My suggestion to Instagram would be to remove/hide that CLOSE FRIENDS label from the story and still let the user choose selected people, without being the close friends label being visible to viewers. Or you might give an option to the user to put CLOSE FRIENDS label only if they want to. I hope I’m able to clear my perspective.
Thanks!