BCC invite on IG or text

September 13, 2022 2:15 PM

Is there a way to send a message to a group of people either via text or Instagram without all the people in the group seeing each other's info? Basically BCC but for text or IG.

I want to invite about 20-30 people to a small gathering, either via text or IG only without having to have 30 people in a text thread or IG group all seeing each other's contacts. So basically like email BCC but not email. Does this feature exist?

I do not have their emails, mailing addresses or facebook for the vast majority of these people and I don't want to take the time to gather said info, so want to keep limited to text or ig.

Is there a feature or trick via text or IG I can use? I'm a frequent texter and IG-er but just not a power-user of all available features so not sure if I'm missing something I might not know about. My inkling is that this doesn't exist, and my google-fu isn't showing much, so fine if the answer is like 'yeah no, not happening'.

I have iphone/imessage and a private personal (non-business/non-verified) IG account.

Thanks!

posted by greta simone to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Signal allows sending broadcasts, including via SMS for recipients who do not use Signal.

(I have not used this feature, but I've seen in and it seems fairly simple and like what you want)
posted by wesleyac at 2:33 PM on September 13, 2022

Oh, wait, that's a Android-only feature since iOS does not allow third-party apps to send SMS messages, so it probably won't work for you, sorry!
posted by wesleyac at 2:34 PM on September 13, 2022

So in Settings > Messages, you can scroll down and disable the "Group Messaging" option in the SMS/MMS section. This should then send group messages out individually as long as they aren't iMessages.


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8278249
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 3:09 PM on September 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

On IG if you share a post you can select a bunch of people to send to and it will send those messages separately. You can add a message there, too. But AFAIK that’s the only way to access the “send separately” function.

But generally no, you can’t replicate BCC functionality. If you send separately you’ll end up with 30 separate messages in your inbox and won’t get the aggregation of replies that happens on your end when you BCC in email.
posted by wemayfreeze at 3:28 PM on September 13, 2022

Via Instagram, if you're not already using the "Close Friends" group, you ~could~ add each of these people to that group, then share a story with them with the invite info telling them to RSVP to you directly, and they won't be able to see who else can see that story. But big caveat: stories expire after 24 hours, and there's no guarantee that they'll log in in time to see that story, let alone RSVP, let alone remember the important details after the story has expired. Maybe you repeat the story - with slightly different text so Insta doesn't think you're spamming - a few times over the interim weeks to give people who haven't seen it a chance? But that obviously takes time as well.

Given that, I'd try to figure out something less ephemeral on the texting side of things.
posted by Pandora Kouti at 4:02 PM on September 13, 2022