Instagram and I have had a complicated relationship for a while now, maybe even from the beginning. But did anyone really know what they were doing when Instagram first showed up in 2010?
My very first post was a heavily filtered, terribly posed photo of my left hand. It showed off my DIY manicure featuring a color that resembles the Pantone Color of the Year, Tangerine Tango. I knew that the Color of the Year drew a lot of internet buzz and thought this was a very strong first post. I was sure to demonstrate my social media savvy with the hashtag #tangerinetango. To this day, it has zero likes. It’s been over a decade. I finally archived it, so if you wanted to find it and give it a like, you can’t, though I appreciate the thought, and I’ll reward that generous thought with a screenshot of the post.
My relationship with Instagram fundamentally changed when I started my own boutique store. All at once, Instagram felt like a necessity, a blessing, and a frenemy. It was time-consuming; posting to my feed was the first thing I did every day, and it could take me up to an hour and a half to make a single post. It was isolating; within two years I went from following other small shops I admired for a sense of community to unfollowing them all because I felt like a failure seeing how many likes and comments and follows their page had compared to mine. What was intended to be connecting and inspiring became comparative and competitive.
When Stories came along, Instagram changed from a tool I would check a few times a day to one that required my attention at every free moment. I had to keep my business on the top of everyone’s mind, and that required frequent Story posts, comment replies, and direct messaging with potential shoppers.
While every other social media platform allowed remote scheduling and posting of content, Instagram did not have that capability. Users could create content in batches, but had to manually upload and post that content, making it impossible to take a break from the app if Instagram was necessary for work.
During my tenure as a small business owner, I frequently researched how to game the platform. I was on multiple email lists managed by so-called Instagram experts telling me how to get the most out of the app. Blog posts led to paid workshops to really understand how to improve engagement. Every two to three months there would be an update to the algorithm that was always crucial for small business owners to know.
Constant changes in the app are truly stressful for creators who depend on Instagram to be a consistent channel for awareness, traffic, sales conversion, or income. It’s especially stressful when, with each change, it is apparent that the priority is not the creator. The priority is data collection and money making (always has been).
Today, that priority looks like Instagram’s painful attempt to shapeshift into TikTok, because TikTok has grown 62.5% in users in the last two years while Instagram has only grown 3%. TikTok is the first non-Facebook app to reach 3 billion downloads. TikTok grew from 100 million users to 1 billion users in just over three years, almost half the time it took Instagram to do the same. Instagram views TikTok the way that Facebook viewed Instagram back in 2012: competition that needs to be killed by acquisition or dominance.
Users don’t want every app to be TikTok, and, in fact, really enjoy having Instagram as a dedicated place for photos. Yet Instagram continues to lean into video content, first with the option to upload video, then with video stories, then IGTV, and now with Reels (an embarrassingly obvious TikTok clone). Video content is much more time intensive, requires a different skill set, and sometimes requires additional cost. Users, and especially those who rely on Instagram for their living, are confused, frustrated, and alarmed about the ongoing changes on the platform.
Two weeks ago, some very, ahem, influential users shared posts demanding the platform “Make Instagram Instagram Again”, bringing the many issues Instagram users have been having with the app to heightened attention. It garnered enough attention that Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri directly addressed the criticism of recent changes in a Reel (of course). Here is the full Reel.
I’ve watched this Reel maybe a dozen times, because the language is fascinating and infuriating. It’s an incredible example of saying nothing while sounding like something.
First, Mosseri addresses the full screen feed test that Instagram is conducting (a feed that is remarkably like the one on TikTok). He assures the audience that if your feed is full screen and you hate it, don’t worry! They’re just testing it out and you were randomly selected to be a test subject. It’s actually good that your experience is bad because that way Instagram can learn that you hate it.
Mosseri says that the idea is that a full screen experience might be a more fun and engaging experience. (In what way? Why is that the hypothesis? Is it because TikTok is growing so quickly and that’s the format they use?) He also admits that it’s bad, and says they have to get it to be good in order to “ship it to the rest of the Instagram community”.
It’s pointless to test a product to end-users that you know is not good. If you’re testing something with the intent to roll it out to everyone, it should be as good as you can get it before receiving feedback from users, or it should be a clear beta test into which users may opt-in and be able to provide feedback to developers. Otherwise, it’s an ineffective test, because you would never actually roll out a product that you know is not good. The whole goal of a product test is to see how many people like the product, so making that product “good” is pretty important. The results you’ve gained from this bad “test” are irrelevant to the roll out. It’s a waste of time, money, and it’s a great way to lose users’ trust at best and lose them altogether at worst.
Why do they want to make this shift (besides because that’s what TikTok does)? Because it’s a lot easier to measure attention on a piece of content if that is the only content on your screen. Then, the app can calculate exactly how long you spent on that post. With Instagram’s current format, you may be scrolling at a consistent pace, perhaps absentmindedly, not really making it clear where you’re looking or how much interest you have in a single post. Instagram’s actual product is not the app or the ads within it, it’s us. It’s our attention and our data. Switching to a full screen feed provides Instagram with more precise data points, and anything that improves the quality of user data will be pursued.
Mosseri then addresses concerns about photos being buried and the intense shift to video (more specifically, Reels) saying, “I want to be clear: we are going to continue to support photos” because it’s part of Instagram’s “heritage”.
I do not think it is correct to refer to any aspect of a technology application’s less than 12-year history as “heritage”. Maybe he’s using that term to refer to the fact that Facebook “inherited” the photo aspect of Instagram when it was purchased. But that’s strange, because that’s literally all the app was when it was purchased for $1 billion in 2012. Referring to photos as something you inherited while you hype up all the non-photo things you want to add makes it seem like you wish you hadn’t inherited the photos. If that’s the case, why did Facebook buy Instagram in the first place? In order to kill the competition.
That’s not speculation. According to email exchanges between Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook former chief financial officer David Ebersman, made public in 2020 by the US House antitrust subcommittee, Facebook wanted to buy Instagram in order to avoid competition, because it saw that Instagram had the potential to hurt Facebook.
It bears repeating (now in standardized test format, sorry!):
TikTok : Instagram/Facebook/Meta :: Instagram : Facebook in 2012.
Except now Instagram/Facebook/Meta can’t buy TikTok, so it has to try to compete via imitation.
Mosseri continues, “That said, I need to be honest. I do believe that more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time”. That’s an odd thing to say as the CEO of the company. He has control over this outcome, or at least more control than anyone else. If you’re the one making the decision, what do you mean “I do believe”?
The CEO says that we will see content shift from photos to video even if Instagram changes nothing or if users only look at a chronological feed. What he’s not saying is that the algorithm is built to favor video because Instagram built it to do that.
Analytics are the main benefit of switching from a Personal Account to a Business Account. Business Accounts on Instagram, especially those with full-time social media analysts and managers on staff, monitor their analytics. When new features are added by Instagram, the algorithm favors them in order to encourage users to actually try them. Consequently, the analytics clearly show that videos get more reach, views, and engagement compared to static photos.
To suggest that this is a natural progression of user-generated content trends and not the direct effect of an algorithm coded to favor video above all else is disingenuous. It imagines that engagement with content is based on merit alone, and there is a level playing field for all, but anyone who has used Instagram - or any algorithm-based social media platform, for that matter - knows that is not true. The algorithm has biases and treats positive and negative interaction equally, effectively boosting the most polarizing content. Key metrics that signal success, like followers and likes, can be bought to artificially inflate an account’s level of influence. Content reach can be bought through advertising within the platform. (This imagining is remarkably similar to the false promise of The American Dream, but that’s another essay.)
Even if a user changes their feed to be chronological, creators have already had to adapt and create video content. Those who want to grow on Instagram will continue to create video content, because all the feeds relying on the algorithm will continue to favor video. Further, video content is more likely to show up on the Discover page, and that is the key to reaching a new audience. It is simply dishonest to purport that this is a choice that users are making. (Sort of like how it’s dishonest to suggest that that we’re supposed to enjoy working and if we don’t like our job then we need to work harder at finding that “dream job” when a lot of us only work to pay for the things that we need in order to live because basic human needs like food and water and shelter cost money, but that’s another essay.)
According to Mosseri, another complaint users have is that the Recommendations they are being fed are not appealing to them and are cluttering their feed. He defends this feature by framing it as something to help you discover new and interesting things. He suggests that if it doesn’t align with your interests, that means Instagram is doing a bad job, and they’re working on it. He asks for our help by letting the platform know when we don’t like things.
Put another way, Instagram is asking us to help them make the algorithm better by not just telling them what we do like by engaging with content, but also by telling them what we don’t like by clicking a link. He frames improved Recommendations to be a way to help creators reach more people; it’s not. That positive and negative feedback is simply more data users provide to Instagram, which is then used to sell advertisements. Recommendations are to help advertisers better target customers.
As Mosseri wraps up, he tries to reassure us by saying that some things are going to stay the same. That’s vague, but the language he uses next makes it clear that it’s vague by design. Emphasis below is my own.
“We’re going to stay committed to supporting creators more broadly. We’re going to stay committed to supporting photos. We’re going to stay in a place where we try and put your friends' content at the top of Feed and at the front of Stories whenever possible.”
The amount of flexible language is simply too much.
The word “supporting” is a deliberate choice. What does that mean, actually, in this context? Supporting may mean holding up, carrying weight, or offering financial support (it’s 100% not the last one). If Instagram is going to “stay committed” to holding up creators on the platform, how will they do that? Not by listening to them, evidently. Likely by boosting their Reels, another coercive encouragement to creators to shift to video.
What about “supporting” photos? Perhaps Instagram will “support” photos by allowing them to be published. As long as photos may be posted to the platform, they are technically supported by Instagram.
Phrases like “more broadly” and “whenever possible” are absolutely perfect when you’re pitching a project and want to sound smart and confident but definitely do not know the answer, don’t have the data set handy, or actually mean the opposite but can’t say “no”. For example:
A: “How are you going to reduce your carbon footprint?”
B: “We do everything we can in order to reduce our carbon offsets whenever possible.”
A: “You’ve pushed back a bit when it comes to renewable energy adoption, what are you going to do about that?”
B: “We are excited to be switching to renewables more broadly by 2025.”
There is a lot of information missing and/or presumed with terms like “whenever possible” and “more broadly”. What’s the baseline from which you are “broadening”? How “broad”, specifically? How often is “possible”? What are the circumstances that render it to be “possible” or “impossible”? How do those circumstances arise?
There is reason to believe that “whenever possible” and “more broadly” practically equates to 1 out of 10, 20, maybe 100 times. As long as it’s not never, technically speaking, no lies were told.
Those phrases are made even more meaningless when they are preceded with “we try”, another go-to when you don’t know the answer or can’t say no. It pushes the other party away gently, feeling heard and affirmed, without actually committing to anything of substance. It allows for no consequence if they do not meet expectations, because they never promised anything, only said they’d “try”. It’s effectively a linguistic backdoor to avoid accountability.
Adam Mosseri’s Reel received some backlash, and it also received some praise for its transparency. I value transparency, but not when it’s actually a directive presented as a possibility that’s open to feedback. Mosseri told us, without explicitly telling us, that Instagram will keep changing however they plan to change, whether creators want it to or not.
The test they’re conducting isn’t seeking qualitative results, it’s pass / fail. As long as Instagram doesn’t lose too many users, the test passes. Nothing will change as long as users stay on the app.
Leaving my Business Account when I walked away from my small business was an incredible relief. I could actually unplug for as long as I wanted without feeling like it was directly hurting my livelihood. I kept a Personal Account, but I could relax. I didn’t have to consider everything I posted to be an extension of my “brand”. I didn’t have to keep to a posting schedule or research hashtags or maintain a pristine grid. It didn’t matter if no one saw or liked my post. My follower count was irrelevant.
At the end of 2020, I downloaded all of my data from the last 13 years, then erased it from the platform and deleted my Facebook account forever. It was liberating. I imagine the day I leave Instagram will feel the same.