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Instagram post previews have made a return to Twitter.

The photo-sharing platform has brought back support for Twitter to preview a snippet of a post when shared on the rival social media site, nine years after it was removed.

Instagram controversially took the feature away when it was acquired by Facebook – which is now known as Meta – in 2012, but it has begun to return to some users this week, according to BBC News.

The feature shows a small preview of the Instagram post when it is shared on Twitter, and both platforms have confirmed the reinstated feature will be available to everyone soon.

A tweet on Twitter’s official support account read: “If you want to share your latest Instagram post on the Twitter timeline too, you’re in luck: now when you share a link to an IG post in a tweet, it’ll show up as a card with a preview of the photo (sic)”

Instagram sparked controversy with users when it removed support for Twitter cards in 2012, and said at the time it wanted to take back control of its content following its merger with social media site Facebook.

Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom insisted at the time that the mandate came from himself, and not Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg.

He said Instagram was attempting to grow its web platform and shared hopes that the move would help increase traffic.