[HN Gopher] Instagram Is Over
___________________________________________________________________
Instagram Is Over
Author : dailo10
Score : 151 points
Date : 2022-12-03 15:45 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| dmje wrote:
| Eldest son (17) and all his mates use it - very rarely do they
| post publicly, it's purely for messaging. I've never been sure
| why, there's plenty enough alternatives, but that's how it is for
| him and his cohort.
| dugmartin wrote:
| I'm pretty sure your son and his mates all have finstas and
| post a lot - you are just not seeing it (source: having two
| teenage daughters)
| Vespasian wrote:
| Not OP, but going by pesonal experience way back in days of
| original facebook days a lot of people never posted that much
| and mainly consumed as soon as it was possible.
|
| Even before that on forums etc. there were many more lurkers
| than posters.
|
| 17 year old me didn't wanted to be compared to all the others
| "perfect" lives.
|
| Maybe I'm naive but I bet that hasn't fundamentally changed.
| dmix wrote:
| It's used heavily in dating these days. We use instagram as a
| messenger because that's what everyone has and it's socially
| easier to ask a new person for the instagram rather than their
| phone number.
|
| Its predictable and not entirely private like a close friend
| group chat on iMessage or WhatsApp. Plus of course the way it
| integrates with feeds of photo/videos you're already looking at
| casually.
|
| The same way FB used to be.
| isametry wrote:
| If data plans weren't tied to them, Gen Z probably wouldn't
| have phone numbers at all anymore. (Well, at least in those
| parts of the world where a data reception no slower than 3G
| is ubiquitous.)
|
| If you think about it, the whole concept really _does_ stick
| out nowadays. The idea of this unique, static (or at least
| not easily changeable), non-descript identifier tied only to
| you and your physical device is very much a product of its
| time.
|
| Phone numbers only continue to exist by momentum - if a
| similar thing were to be implemented today, it would never
| catch on so universally.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| I am surprised people expect these apps to remain popular for a
| long time. The internet has changed so much. I've watched social
| media apps come and go every few years and I personally think
| they are all short lived trends with maybe a few exceptions. They
| capture a young market first, who provide the value (photos,
| videos, memes) and then older generations start joining after the
| young market is captured. Then after five to 10 years, they age
| out, the fad is over. A new app captures the younger generation
| and the cycle repeats.
|
| Some smaller social media networks have maybe kinda sorta
| survived more than one generation to some extent but it's
| debatable. Twitter seems like it has the most staying power so
| far but the present situation is evolving rapidly.
| fasthands9 wrote:
| I mean I think the people who predicted they would remain
| popular for a long time were actually right? They may stop
| accelerating but they are still as popular as ever.
|
| YouTube is the second visited site in the US and FB is the
| third - and they've been at the top for over a decade. E-mail
| is not a social network but has stuck around for 20 years. I've
| used Reddit since 2010. I've been on Instagram for six years
| now and probably use it more now than I ever have. Even
| Snapchat which to me seemed like a fad - is massively popular
| among teens.
|
| I think it is true there are lots of smaller sites like Vine or
| Digg or YikYak which peter out but it seems like if you hit the
| critical mass then you can maintain popularity for decades.
| bostik wrote:
| YouTube likely has staying power _despite_ of what the
| company are doing with the UI and user experience flows,
| because it sure as hell can 't be _because_ of it. And at
| least their search is not trying to actively work against the
| user. (Their recommendation engine is a dumpster fire, for
| sure.)
|
| A mostly usable, generally accessible, and fairly easily
| discoverable video hosting platform. I can think of a lot of
| worse product pitches.
| fullstackchris wrote:
| I also have seen and beleive this is an accurate picture of how
| these things go. But I'd ask, what about pseudo- social network
| apps like airbnb? They have a minimal social aspect, but to me
| app like that will have a longer possible lifetime. I guess
| even in airbnb's case there are competitors encroaching and
| stealing market share...
| arnvald wrote:
| I'd actually keep using social apps more if they stayed closer
| to their original versions.
|
| My Facebook feed turned from updates from my friends and family
| to garbage filled with politics, ads, suggested pages, and I
| stopped using it.
|
| My Instagram feed turned from photos of my family and friends
| to garbage: again ads, recommended pages, later videos.
| Eventually I deleted it.
|
| Twitter was close to that when they introduces algorithmic feed
| which showed stuff I didn't want to see and I was close to
| deleting the app, thankfully there's a way to still have the
| chronological feed without all the "likes" and
| "recommendations".
|
| I keep using Reddit because I still can use it the same way as
| years ago - join communities that interest me and not see the
| stuff I don't want (even though they regularly push some more
| useless stuff to show me)
|
| I believe social media can last long, but they need to find
| balance between monetization, innovation, and staying true to
| their users. Facebook and Instagram went way too far in
| alienating their users, and while they're still popular,
| they're declining.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| What you're saying is interesting. I think part of that is
| the tension between older and younger generations which is
| why I don't think these things last.
|
| Reddit is kind of a notable standout. Maybe that and
| Twitter's features are what guarantees a sustained
| viewership. I don't know, this is all kind of new.
|
| At least for photo and video sharing sites, it seems like
| these tend to be trendy and have a population boom and bust
| cycle. But then again I don't want to speak authoritatively.
| But looking at FB it reported it's first decline in daily
| visits this year and the decline among teens and younger
| generations is even more pronounced. Certainly looks like a
| population peak.
| grishka wrote:
| The desire to "grow", and the lack of a defined end state for
| that growth, is the problem. It's not hard to build a social
| media service that pays for itself and then some, but they
| all are run by greedy people and so they want more money all
| the time. These people have no notion of "enough money".
| That's the fundamental problem behind all social media
| services going to shit.
|
| The fediverse won't be like that though.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Time will tell what happens with the fediverse, collapsing
| under the weight of moderation sounds like a probable
| scenario to me.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Instagram is "transitional" technology. It peaked at a time when
| traditional social networks had started their slow decline, and
| things like Snapchat and TikTok were gaining some popularity.
| These days it's a bit too open for traditional users, and a bit
| too boring for the average TikTok user. It will always fill a
| niche, but it will inevitably shrink by at least an order of
| magnitude.
| viburnum wrote:
| "In other words, Instagram is giving us the ick: that feeling
| when a romantic partner or crush does something small but
| noticeable--like wearing a fedora--that immediately turns you off
| forever"
|
| This was so ridiculously judgmental that I couldn't keep reading.
| isametry wrote:
| There are currently two comments in this thread reacting
| defensively to that fedora mention - which is two more than I
| would've preferred there to be.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| If it makes you feel any better, it's not the hat's fault.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| found the fedora-wearer
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| On the topic of social media in decline, TikTok also appears to
| have peaked in content already.
|
| Following people isn't that interesting since most content
| creators that hit it big are One Hit Wonders. After they hit that
| big growth spike, they either follow the herd with the latest
| dance or trend, or they keep doing the same thing that made em
| famous with slight variations.
|
| How long can you milk the same dance routine by switching out
| which celebrity does the silly little dance?
|
| There were a few interesting educational channels for a while,
| but most people just don't have that many interesting things to
| keep posting about at the rate which is expected of a platform
| like TikTok. Quality content takes time to produce.
|
| TikTok really only has a few buckets of content types. Some
| examples include thirst traps from sex workers that are looking
| to promote their OnlyFans and cute animals doing cute things.
|
| Instagram isn't that different. I mostly use the app to see cute
| pictures of people's pets and the occasional human picture.
| throwaway82388 wrote:
| It is remarkable how hard it is for a business to simply last a
| decade. To do it at the scale of the incumbent apps is
| astounding to me.
|
| While TikTok is growing quickly, we still don't know its long
| term potential, how 'sticky' it is. I'd predict it has a
| trajectory more like Twitter and less like Snapchat. But it
| could well become a YouTube. All we can do is wait and find
| out.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| TikTok has a creator fund that incentives and rewards their
| creators. It is much closer to YouTube than Twitter or
| Snapchat. And I'm pretty sure it's DAUs are way greater than
| both of those as well.
| throwaway82388 wrote:
| I regretted the Twitter comparison as soon as I reread my
| comment. I was thinking in broader terms -- apps where the
| bulk of users follow creators and not personal contacts
| tend to grow and sustain very differently. But it's so
| obviously most similar to YouTube, from a user perspective,
| it's an accelerated YouTube experience.
| chadlavi wrote:
| It's almost like these businesses don't actually provide any
| value (the users do, but the users aren't motivated to
| provide value, just motivated to drive engagement)
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| You have to commend YouTube and Twitter's longevity as social
| networks.
|
| YouTube has better and more content than ever. Twitter also has
| the best and most relevant content, provided you curate your
| feed. All the stuff happening on academic Twitter, for
| instance, is hard to find elsewhere.
|
| Reddit also seems to be going down the path of irrelevancy. The
| content is increasingly mediocre and hivemind-ish.
| imbnwa wrote:
| > Reddit also seems to be going down the path of irrelevancy.
| The content is increasingly mediocre and hivemind-ish.
|
| If you're just looking at the 'popular front page', sure, but
| there's a reason people now search Reddit from Google:
| there's value in a 'centralized hub' for communities versus
| Twitter's loosely coupled social graphs.
|
| Reddit replaced all vBulletin-backed forums. You could argue
| Discord might usurp Reddit but Discord isn't searchable from
| the web and is logged in a terribly inconducive format.
|
| I follow MMA, and the MMA reddit is the biggest forum for MMA
| on the English-speaking internet, especially for live events,
| there's no substitute, and I'm sure its like that with a lot
| of niches.
| dageshi wrote:
| Reddit always had a hive mind, it's just the hive mind no
| longer agrees with you so you think it's irrelevant?
|
| Nope, frankly given how long reddit's been around and how it
| continues to gain in popularity I expect it will outlive
| everything on that list except for youtube. It's the webs
| default forum and there will always be a demand for a forum
| on the web.
| pixl97 wrote:
| It's not that reddits users agree or disagree with me it's
| that [removed by Reddit]
| [deleted]
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| YouTube has matured and now has professional YouTube-first
| content. The first time I was on YouTube it had every
| imaginable show (illegally) and that's how they hit their
| incredible initial growth. Then it was amateurs for the next
| ten years doing silly stuff and now it's quite a enjoyable
| platform for information and niche entertainment
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Reddit also seems to be going down the path of irrelevancy.
|
| Reddit's irrelevance is only a matter of time. They're
| jacking up the advertising and banning anything that offends
| the advertisers.
|
| Consider also how imageboards managed to remain relevant to
| this day.
| prpl wrote:
| This just reminds me of music in the 50s/60s and radio (without
| the payola)
|
| Some bands were one hit wonders, but some were able to
| transition to a career, usually help behind them - writers,
| producers, and everything else from the record label. Chubby
| Checker always makes me laugh with the song Let's Twist Again.
|
| Something similar happened with Youtube, I think. Especially
| with media for kids. Popular channels turned into a
| productions, but usually it was much slower.
|
| TikTok will be like Youtube/Radio Hybrid. Some people will take
| their one hit wonder and transition to a career, but not
| without the help of something like a record label or production
| company.
|
| And if there's payola, it's going to click farms.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Instagram is doing just fine at the job it morphed into. A high
| end escort advertising board.
|
| A 20yo guy cannot afford to spend $5K a day for a beautiful girl
| that has posted scantly clad pics exactly for this purpose. They
| are not the market. The market is middle age wealthy men and the
| women they pay for their "time." Then the women they pay go back
| to Instagram to find things to buy for "bragging rights" which
| satisfies the advertisers.
| impulser_ wrote:
| They moved on from Facebook being over to Instagram being over
| lol.
|
| Instagram isn't over. It's still the most popular social media
| app on both App Store and Google Play in the US.
|
| For the past couple of years you always see articles popping up
| about Facebook being dead, then you look at the actual data and
| people are using Facebook more than ever.
|
| Look at the last report from Meta, more people on a daily and
| monthly basis are using Facebook and Instagram than ever both.
|
| Nearly 3b people use their apps on the daily basis. It going to
| take on hell of a long time before they become over.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > Look at the last report from Meta, more people on a daily and
| monthly basis are using Facebook and Instagram than ever both.
|
| It's more nuanced than that.
|
| If you're losing traction where it matters - in younger
| generations & high-value markets like the US that have higher
| future cash flows - it doesn't matter if you're making up for
| it with usage from old people or people in poor countries
| without good advertising infra.
|
| Facebook is definitely not looking rosy for the future.
|
| And Instagram seems like it's on a similar path to Facebook 4
| or 5 years ago. It doesn't look bad, but it also doesn't look
| great...
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| I went on Instagram for the first time in a few years
| yesterday. None of my friends post anymore and it's all ads
| or sponcon.
|
| Group chats have been slowly growing for the last decade, and
| now have become completely dominant. I wonder how much of it
| is fear of cancellation leading to defaulting to private
| communication.
| toastal wrote:
| I had my account banned this year after logging in for a
| long while and told I looked too much like a bot. The only
| way to try to get access again was to upload a 'video
| selfie' at multiple angles, but no way would I want to help
| that facial algorithm any more than necessary. Good
| riddance.
| com2kid wrote:
| > in younger generations & high-value markets like the US
| that have higher future cash flows
|
| People in their 30s and 40s earn more money than college
| students and new grads in their 20s, and they are spending
| that money right now. Facebook groups for home decorating,
| design, cars, fitness, parenting, all of those are really
| popular. You can go on Facebook and find a large community
| dedicated to literally any style of home decor you can
| imagine, and those people are quite willing to spend money.
|
| Same with the parenting groups. DINKs don't spend money at
| anything near the rate parents do. DINKs have higher free
| cash flow, but that is because they have free cash, parents
| are buying stuff all the time.
|
| Honestly, 5 years ago I barely used Facebook, now that I am
| older I am using it a lot more.
|
| Also, with that entire population decline thing, each new
| generation is, at best, the same size as the generation that
| came before it. If constant double digit growth is desired,
| sure, need to get that next generation on board, but at some
| point Facebook may have to be happy with "just" earning hard
| to imagine amounts of money each year and only seeing single
| digit growth in revenue.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >but at some point Facebook may have to be happy with
| "just"
|
| This isn't a Facebook problem, this is a late stage
| capitalism problem that risks causing our current economies
| to collapse to the ground.
| taf2 wrote:
| Gonna say between my three daughters and their huge network of
| friends and family I can't see "insta" fading away anytime
| soon... maybe as an investor we could say expected growth is
| going to slow due to market saturation or something but "insta"
| is here to stay from what I can see
| deltree7 wrote:
| I like how HN crowd falls all over for an article that caters
| to what they want to believe.
|
| Where is Anecdotal vs Actual Usage Data rage?
|
| Ah, that's right, it doesn't fit their narrative. So, everyone
| is happy to Fox-News this.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| My anecdata is that all IG is really used for anymore is
| messaging due to inertia and cross-posting content from other
| platforms. Very little original user generated content.
|
| Fundamentally, these old apps that are built on the "create an
| account and manually follow users" model cannot compete with
| TikTok right now, and I don't think they'll be able to change to
| be competitive with TikTok in the future.
| purec wrote:
| Author points to data showing 300m active users in 2013, 2b
| active users now, yet claims that Instagram is over. What is the
| replacement? Where is the decline?
| achenet wrote:
| Author is in what some would call an NYC cool kid media bubble,
| and you know, those cool kids aren't using it anymore, which
| means no on who matters does (2billion active dorks
| notwithstanding)
| throwaway82388 wrote:
| I'm far from bullish on meta long-term, but reporting like this
| would have you believe that nobody uses Facebook, and that
| Instagram is soon to share its fate. Optimists that they are,
| tech reporters overweight growth to absurd extremes. Maybe
| reporting on youth trends brings out the insecurities in all of
| us--you'd rather not look clueless in front of your two cool
| friends in their early 20s than the 2 billion or so Facebook
| MAUs.
|
| TikTok is a platform with huge growth potential. IG is
| perceptibly declining. But Facebook has proven itself fairly
| durable, mostly to people outside tech and media bubbles. It'd be
| wise to not call it over just yet.
| AJ007 wrote:
| Does it? Back in 2021 TikTok was averaging more hours of
| viewing per month than Youtube (in the US.)
| joshenberg wrote:
| Durable isn't a great word for what Facebook has become. It's
| been LinkedIn-ified - the entire notifications category is
| filled with useless recommendations and suggestions rather than
| meaningful updates from connections. And they still put
| notification dots up for it. Even if there's an opt out option
| and I could 'filter that' I haven't seen anything else relevant
| in 1+ year.
| throwaway82388 wrote:
| That sounds like a bad experience, but it's not universal.
| It's challenging to understand a platform from our individual
| vantage points (without access to internal dashboards),
| particularly on a network with between 2-3 billion MAUs. And
| if your personal interests are elsewhere, and your
| generational cohort is underrepresented. I'm an 'elder
| millennial' who got Facebook when it was still only for edu
| domains, and I've grown older with the service. I just
| briefly checked in with mine and within the last 24 hours I
| can see at least a dozen updates (all with decent engagement)
| from family and friends, some distant and others close.
| Babies being born, kids doing kid stuff, holiday posts.
| Pretty typical, particularly at this time of year. All that
| is to say, it's all a function of your real world network. If
| I were the age I was when I started using Facebook, I'd
| probably find it desolate and boring, too.
|
| But I would say 'fairly durable' is an apt description of an
| 18 year old service still operating at its scale. Exciting,
| maybe less than it once was. But fairly durable, certainly.
| pfortuny wrote:
| All of us tend to forget that each year there is a whole cohort
| of people getting a new phone and using fb, instagram, twitter,
| whatever for the first time.
| nightski wrote:
| It takes a second to open an app, become a MAU, and then close
| it in disinterest. I'll admit this is my relationship with
| Facebook. I never see anything on there I am remotely
| interested in. Just old relatives spewing nonsense. But I guess
| I count as one of those 2 billion MAUs. I wonder how many are
| in the same spot.
| akeck wrote:
| Myself and other folks in my friend group are MAU in that we
| use FB about once a month, maybe once every two months. My IG
| use became the same after the recent feed changes. Using
| either platform now feels like work and I have enough work to
| do already.
| seydor wrote:
| You keep opening it though
| throwaway82388 wrote:
| I'd bet a solid majority, like it is on any social platform.
| Most users don't post or engage.
|
| Biggest predictor for Facebook and IG use among my sample of
| friends is whether they're married and have families, or in
| many cases, pets. In my sample, many own homes or property.
| Not where the growth is, but not worthless from a revenue
| standpoint.
| seydor wrote:
| "cool people are bored of some media consumption format"
|
| What will be the next one?
|
| A: hand drawn postcards
| barnabee wrote:
| Instagram as a social network sucks but I like sharing my photos
| with people who are already my friends (private account), and
| seeing their photos too.
| rpxio wrote:
| my close friends and family have moved to the app Locket for
| sharing photos. much more direct and less "social" features
| (likes, follows, reels) that i don't care about.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| In my German circles, that spot has been covered by whatsapp
| for a long while now. It never has been instagram or anything
| else really. For me it went from studivz (long defunct German
| "facebook" for university students, didn't last long), via
| facebook (for a short while, and due to lack of alternatives)
| straight to whatsapp, and has stayed there ever since, with the
| exception of some photography interested people sharing larger
| sets of photos on flickr at times, and some dating/sexting
| happening on snap (but most of that still was/is on whatsapp).
| Instagram was always understood as a place where you go if you
| want to see celebs, influencers and the "wannabes".
|
| Granted, I am a bit older, a millennial (as much as it hurts me
| to admit) and an older one at that, but I regularly take the
| tram in my city at times when all the teenagers are going to
| school or coming from school, and you can see a damn lot of
| whatsapp on all those phone screens, a lot of tiktok, and a
| good amount of discord.
| indymike wrote:
| Instagram was really nice until a few years ago. I could keep up
| visually with family and friends, and didn't have all
| advertorial, news and political garbage get in the way. Still
| good for talking to people, but a lot of that is moving to
| messenger apps not from Meta.
| yupis wrote:
| Instagram is the new Tumblr
| lmedinas wrote:
| There are 3 reasons why Tiktok succeeded and Instagram struggles.
|
| 1) The focus of the Social Network is normal people, doing
| anything it might be interesting to others. Which is pretty much
| the contrary of Instagram which focus on Celebrities and
| "Friends".
|
| 2) Tiktok has an amazing fine-tuned Algorithm. Its like even a
| mirror of your subconscious, it tries very much to play anything
| you desire to see.
|
| 3) Instagram, Youtube and Twitter are full of ads. It just breaks
| the user experience. Youtube experience sucks too because they
| show Videos with higher probability of views which in turn are
| tipically big youtubers playing sponsored content.
| coolbreezetft22 wrote:
| Maybe I'm ignorant of what TikTok is but it seems to be mostly
| about video sharing and less about "social networking" with
| friends and family??
|
| I also think TikTok has serious risks going forward re Chinese
| government. Already a lot of grumbling from lawmakers in US about
| banning it as CCP growing more belligerent in recent years
| whereas Facebook products aren't at all influenced by it.
| chrischen wrote:
| Tiktok is short addictive videos from randos.
|
| Youtube is long addictive videos.
|
| Instagram and facebook is still primarily focused on content
| from people you know, though they are also trying to copy some
| of TikTok's randos content via the Reels feature.
|
| At the end of the day they just want to get attention by giving
| content, whether using friends or essentially crowdsourcing.
|
| I prefer Netflix, because I'm paying them and they are not just
| manipulating me to show ads.
| api wrote:
| The trend in social media for years has been away from social
| and toward just addictive content and finding the best way to
| crowdsource that content. The purpose is becoming simply to
| get you to spend as much time as possible staring at the
| phone to sell ads, and nothing more.
|
| I predict the next advancement will be pure AI generated
| content, just a continuous adversarial attack on the human
| brain programmed to maximize viewing time for each
| individual. This could be packaged as things like virtual
| friends (Replika) or games with constantly evolving game play
| punctuated with ads or even as something that looks like
| TikTok.
|
| Pure refined 200 proof addictive emptiness is the logical
| apex of "free" mass media. We will look back on TV and early
| generation social media as high culture compared to what's
| coming.
| jmcgough wrote:
| I think we're seeing a pendulum swing in some ways. The
| migration to Mastodon has been really exciting because
| servers are funded through Patreon, not eyeballs.
| Communities are smaller and content is higher quality,
| without pressuring you to post content you think will get
| the most likes. It's like an actual social media platform,
| not what so many others have become.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > I prefer Netflix, because I'm paying them and they are not
| just manipulating me to show ads
|
| Sorry to break it to you but Netflix is absolutely
| manipulating their audience in trying to convince everyone to
| watch Netflix productions.
|
| When Netflix came into the market they had a unique platform
| and were burning money to get good content in. Now studios
| realized there is money in streaming and are squeezing
| Netflix prices.
|
| Making their own productions means it is all vertical for
| them, less risk and more profitable.
|
| By the end of it you're stuck watching something, just not
| exactly what you wanted in the first place.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| This reminds me of a related article discussed earlier:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32482523
|
| The Three Trends:
|
| 1. Medium: text -> images -> video -> 3D graphics -> VR
|
| 2. AI: time -> rank -> recommend -> generate
|
| 3. UI: click -> scroll -> tap -> swipe -> autoplay
|
| TikTok is at the video/recommend/swipe stage.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Autoplaying VR porn generated on-demand to perfectly match
| each visitor's preferences.
|
| Yeah, that sounds like it would become popular very
| quickly.
| jsemrau wrote:
| In my eyes, TikTok is a social entertainment app where simple
| user-generated content is created with the purpose to provide
| enjoyment. It's not focused on the needs of other users, but
| entirely about one's own needs. Hence, I call this new version
| of social Eigensocial.
| kodisha wrote:
| I think it's safe to assume that it's purpose is to gather
| data.
| noveltyaccount wrote:
| _" To scroll through Instagram today is to parse a series of
| sponsored posts from brands, recommended Reels from people you
| don't follow, and the occasional picture from a friend that's
| finally surfaced."_
|
| I have two Instagram accounts: one that _only_ follows friends
| and family. Another that follows brands, influencers, and such.
| It completely fixed my Instagram experience. I can choose the
| (low volume) social network of friends, or endless scrolling and
| discovery. Never do they intermix. The friends-only feed is so
| low traffic, I never get sucked into sponsored or suggested
| posts. Highly recommend.
| prpl wrote:
| Instagram was over when all the "kids" were on Snapchat, except
| it wasn't.
|
| Maybe it is, but it will be a death by 500 million cuts, not a
| max exodus. There is no clear successor.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _There is no clear successor._
|
| Successor to what? As if it serves some purpose? This is like
| wondering what will "successfully replace" a tumor that's to be
| removed...
|
| (And, yes, you can have millions of users without service a
| purpose, at least not any useful one. All kinds of crap has).
| warkanlock wrote:
| This is one of the biggest jibes I have ever read, given that
| Meta's MAU is the highest of all time (2.9b, if I remember
| correctly)
|
| Instagram it's not over, and I bet will win the battle against
| TikTok
| pixl97 wrote:
| MAU doesn't mean much if they are losing users in primary
| markets and new users are from places where the ads don't pay.
| jibe wrote:
| Jibe?
| chihuahua wrote:
| Jibe
|
| (verb): change course by swinging a fore-and-aft sail across
| a following wind.
|
| (noun): an act or instance of jibing.
|
| GP believes that the Atlantic article constitutes an instance
| of changing course by swinging a sail across a following
| wind, presumably metaphorically.
| bink wrote:
| Check their username.
| jrm4 wrote:
| In a very broad sense, I'm glad to see things like this
| happening; I think a (relatively) high rate of turnover in social
| media is probably orders of magnitude better and safer than "one
| app to rule them all, forever."
|
| It additionally makes me bullish on federated deals like
| Activitypub/Mastodon.
|
| It's funny that the above presently tend to be "lefty-crunchy-
| hippie" -- because, I think if _corporations_ get it through
| their hiveminds that the above enables them to have their own
| "official source of truth," thus preventing doofiness like blue
| check marks, this would all take off in a beneficial way.
| winternett wrote:
| They keep starting out with a free service then they focus on
| turning it into a paid service... In Instagram's case, just
| like with Twitter and even TikTok now, they charge users for
| visibility, or they trickle it out just enough to make users
| constantly and feverishly ask what they're doing wrong. It's
| mental manipulation that just doesn't work, and the paid
| advertising format leads platforms to their death, but just
| like users keep posting, investors are flocking to put money
| onto the next social media platform.
|
| I hope that independent web communities return, and that people
| start making their own web sites, tracking music and
| entertainment across multiple platforms and dealing with their
| content payola schemes and repetitive marketing is ruining
| everything fun and useful about the Internet.
| risingsubmarine wrote:
| On more than a few occasions now I have loaded up my infrequently
| checked instagram accounts and been presented with something
| awful. They were always attention seeking reels from random
| accounts I don't follow; showing people being hurt or accident
| footage. I swipe up on the app and kill it pretty much straight
| away, then I consider deleting my instagram accounts once again.
| racked wrote:
| Honestly I never understood the appeal.
|
| A social network that forces you to wedge your content in images
| and short videos, while on Facebook you could share YouTube
| videos, music, interesting links, write-ups, you name it. How can
| anyone in their right mind prefer something as limiting as
| Instagram? Even its instant messenger is limited compared to
| Facebook's.
| standardUser wrote:
| The simplification is (was) part of the appeal. It felt clean
| and refreshing to mostly look at pretty photos with minimal
| text. And it was a much more positive space. Photos of
| vacations, food, clothes, pets, friends. No political fighting
| or conspiracy theories or bitching about an ex. The comment
| space, a usual cesspool of unmitigated negativity and cruelty,
| was conveniently tucked away.
|
| I miss the pre-pandemic Instagram. Now, it feels like it's
| transformed into a more general-purpose, Facebook-like social
| network. Which I guess should have been predictable!
| pwython wrote:
| People said the same thing about Twitter with its original 140
| character limit. Just easily-consumable content you can scroll
| through. I enjoy the artwork I find on there. If I want YouTube
| links, music videos, news articles, etc I'll hit up Reddit.
| mertd wrote:
| Instagram's formats feel nicer for getting updates from friends
| and family. No rants, just happy photos against usually a nice
| background.
|
| Performative or commercial accounts make the experience worse
| though, and from what I understand these are being prioritized
| in the timeline.
| raldi wrote:
| Instagram used to be about seeing what my friends were up to; now
| it's all my friends resharing made-for-IG takes and re-re-re-re-
| re-sharing group photos I've already seen seven times.
|
| I want an "OC Only" toggle.
|
| Edit: And the above was referring only to Stories. I haven't
| looked at the feed regularly in over a year.
| jumpkick wrote:
| I wonder if there's a market for small app, limited in scope,
| knock off of the original Instagram. $1/month.
| rglullis wrote:
| https://pixelfed.org.
|
| Tell me you are willing to pay $1/month, and I will stop
| postponing it and finally add it to https://communick.com
| MattDemers wrote:
| You end up having a cyclical problem, though:
|
| No one uses it because no one posts > No one posts because they
| don't expect interaction > No one expects interaction because
| no one uses it
|
| And then brands or influencers don't join because there's no
| potential to make money.
|
| Part of the history of these big incumbents is that people were
| discovering a more user-friendly way to use the web _through_
| them; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube all were "Hey, we
| can now do something we could do before, much easier, in a more
| accessible way that I can show to my normie friends/my
| parents."
|
| Alternatives that DO come up, like 500px or Vimeo, end up
| needing to become more for enthusiasts (people who care about
| fidelity, rather than novelty), turning away normies in the
| process. That's fine for them, as long as their goal isn't to
| "be an alternative YouTube/Flickr."
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| I'm sure there's many but in the world of social media, content
| is key and users are what make that happen.
|
| I tried using Peer Tube recently, felt like I was on 2005
| YouTube...absolute no man's land
| BbzzbB wrote:
| There are reasons why IG has 2B people, part of which is not
| charging $1/month.
| rglullis wrote:
| There are many email providers who are quite profitable by
| charging just that and are not afraid of Gmail's absolute
| dominance.
| isametry wrote:
| Well, and do those providers have 1.5 billion users like
| Gmail does?
|
| I'm not really sure whether you made this analogy to
| disagree or to prove their point.
| thekyle wrote:
| If you use one of those smaller paid email providers you
| can still interact with people who use Gmail. If you tried
| to create a small Instagram competitor it's unlikely that
| Facebook would ever agree to federate with you.
| rglullis wrote:
| No, but you can federate with the millions of people
| already using other alternatives based on ActivityPub.
|
| People are really underestimating the second order
| effects from the Twitter exodus. It's not just Twitter
| that has a competitor. It's just a matter of time until
| _all_ the Fediverse gets enough of a critical mass and
| then _all_ walled gardens will lose its appeal.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| Social products all have a lifetime value and it's incredibly
| short. The same thing will also happen to TikTok one day. I
| suspect we will learn in the coming decades that social media
| companies are very profitable in the short term, but not so in
| the long term, say 20 years, unless the keep introducing new
| viral social products.
| yogthos wrote:
| This is a problem for commercial social media companies.
| Companies need to make profit to operate, and once they stop
| being able to show growth then investments start to dry up.
| There is also no clear revenue model aside from ads and mining
| of user data.
|
| The situation is quite different in open source world. The only
| factors that matter for an open source platform are having
| enough people who are willing to develop it, run servers, and
| post content. Once the platform reaches enough users to be
| sustainable then it can exist indefinitely without need for
| growth or any significant funding.
|
| We can look at Mastodon as a case study. It builds on top of
| all the work done by GNU Social and the OStatus protocol. GNU
| Social languished in obscurity for many years, but Mastodon was
| able to build on this work and create a much larger social
| network. Now, there's a whole federation of different platforms
| using ActivityPub protocol that grew out of OStatus. Fediverse
| will likely outlive every single commercial social media
| platform in existence today.
| dopeboy wrote:
| I think this is a lazy conclusion and needs more depth. What's
| huge - seismic really - is that people actually prefer to know
| more about strangers than friends. On average, these strangers
| tend to be personalities and as a result are more entertaining
| / interesting / provocative than my typical friend. Combine
| this with the average person posting less about their life and
| you end up with a serious problem.
|
| Twitter first rode this trend, but TikTok really exploited it
| specifically with the medium of video and their algorithm to
| serve content.
|
| Networks effects were once seen as the ultimate moat and one
| reason why FB could never be taken down. But it turns out if
| the content people "trade" on their "marketplace" is poor, all
| the network effects in the world won't save you.
| bg24 wrote:
| Why bother building a network when the whole world can be
| your network.
| babyshake wrote:
| It would be interesting to see a major player in the space
| really embracing the fashion and seasonality of their products
| and succeeding with that strategy.
| specialist wrote:
| Like the CPG, dating, porn, gaming, and clothing industries?
|
| Some categories of brands can be long lived. Coca Cola and
| Disney.
|
| Some categories of brands are mayflies. Pop music, TV, fast
| fashion.
|
| My hunch is the average lifecycle of social media brands and
| MMORPG properties are roughly the same. Say 5-10 years?
| kodisha wrote:
| WOW would like to have a word.
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| I think it's the opposite: lifetimes for well-established
| social products are getting longer. People left digg for reddit
| because of a redesign, people stay on Twitter despite an
| ideologic shift from left to right! Nerds switch platforms over
| minor perceived slights and switch Linux distributions over
| license-philosophies or systemd-controversies; normies stay
| with the herd, with the audience, with the likes and clicks.
| Animats wrote:
| _" To scroll through Instagram today is to parse a series of
| sponsored posts from brands, recommended Reels from people you
| don't follow, and the occasional picture from a friend that's
| finally surfaced after being posted several days ago. It's not
| what it used to be."_
|
| That seems to be how social media services die. Too many ads,
| fewer users, revenue drop, more ads to boost revenue, still fewer
| users, irrelevance. This is called "pulling a Myspace".
| evo wrote:
| I feel like there's a natural adoption curve to social media:
|
| 1. The growing social media platform balances the needs of two
| user groups: the consumer's need for fresh content and the
| neophyte producer's need for a slowly ramping trickle of
| validation. This is possible because the people don't know how
| to produce content in the new format yet.
|
| 2. The mature social media platform has picked winners. We know
| who the successful youtubers are, the successful twitch
| streamers, etc., and they know how to create the optimal media
| for their platform. At this point we're maximally satisfying
| consumer demand, but we're actively repelling the neophyte
| producers because the bar is now too high. They form a growing
| untapped market for the next social media platform.
|
| 3. Decay. A competing platform has stolen the limelight by
| restoring the dynamism of the consumer/producer balance. The
| successful producers of the platform start flexing out to the
| new upstart, though they're unlikely to repeat their successes
| there, they're too late to the game and bound to old habits.
| Chasing feature parity with the new platform does nothing
| because now you're just upsetting the existing balance but
| that's not suddenly going to pull new people into the game,
| they've already written you off.
| pmontra wrote:
| Some social media are like that, others are not. When I read
| "It's that I don't see my actual friend's posts and they
| don't see mine." I thought that my friends do see my posts
| and viceversa because we use channels on WhatsApp and
| Telegram. If all I want is keeping in touch with friends, why
| should I use media like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok?
| pixl97 wrote:
| Because in the US almost no one uses WhatsApp and Telegram.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| This is 100% my experience with facebook. It used to be
| bearable, but once covid and WFH hit globally, they changed
| ratio of adverts massively overnight, making the use of product
| a sufferfest for people like me who are allergic to ads.
| Unfortunately not even ublock origin can handle all of their
| embedded ads.
|
| Well, I certainly will never ever miss FB but those contacts
| would be nice to preserve somehow...
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| When the accountants make the decisions, the company must die.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Hey don't blame the accountants. The root problem is that
| these services don't actually have a business plan other than
| grow, sell ads. Instagram is 12 years old and their
| leadership hasn't come up with anything that makes money.
| amelius wrote:
| And even the non-advertisement posts are still self-promotional
| posts.
| elgar1212 wrote:
| this is even more infuriating than actual ads, because at
| least actual ads have the "sponsored" label and don't try to
| hide it
| 63 wrote:
| This isn't my experience with Instagram at all. I only follow
| people I know personally, check in once or twice a day and see
| posts and stories from them and really nothing else. No
| sponsored posts, no reels, etc. Maybe some ads. I don't use the
| discover page and stop scrolling my feed once I get through all
| the new posts so maybe that's it.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| All mine has devolved to is trying to get me to watch absurd
| reels posts from half naked women trying to send me to an
| OnlyFans. Asking around to people I know they have
| experienced the same. I just stopped using it. It didn't help
| that I realized every post on Instagram authentic or not is
| really just an ad. Even for people I know, it is an ad trying
| to sell me that their life is different than I know it is.
| saurik wrote:
| So, while I 100% agree with the original premise--that
| Instagram is filled with ads and content farms, with
| relatively few "real users" to be found--this specific
| complaint is actually "a you thing": Instagram's feed
| algorithm ranks content in ways that seems to give the
| wrong players power (such as by giving more weight to
| people who merely steal and aggregate content than the ones
| who produce it), but it isn't entirely incompetent.
|
| I am, thereby, going to claim that, if you are getting
| nothing but half naked women on Instagram on your feed, it
| is because you actually "wanted" to see half naked women
| (...maybe "merely" subconsciously! as, while I am not
| entirely sure about Instagram, TikTok is apparently
| tracking implicit watch time more so than explicit actions,
| and maybe you stop for just a bit longer on such content as
| it catches your eye).
|
| In contrast to your experience, I recently went through a
| devastating breakup, and my algorithmic Instagram feed
| seriously has _no_ half naked women on it: it is, instead,
| nothing but an _intense_ pile of captioned voices (like, an
| audio with text, but not video of that person) saying
| pseudo-motivational quotes about relationships ( "if she
| had wanted to make time, she would have" sort of shit) with
| inspirational background music overlapped with videos of
| people "making stuff" (such as carpentry).
|
| It is _demoralizing_ to experience: I go into Instagram for
| whatever reason, start scrolling by accident, and then a
| half hour later I am at the bottom of a pit of emotions
| crying my eyes out while clutching a pillow and I am lucky
| if I escape even an hour after that :(... but, the
| algorithm does 't care about my mental health: it only
| knows that if it shows me videos that cluster along these
| axes I apparently am willing to spend the rest of my life
| watching ads (which make up about 1/4th of the content on
| Instagram).
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I am in the same situation as you but as soon as you have
| caught up with the posts from friends (which if you only have
| a few hundreds and check everyday goes very quickly), it's
| literally only sponsored posts.
|
| I just checked right now, I scrolled through 10 posts of
| accounts that I follow, which took 30 seconds, before getting
| "You're all caught up" and having literally only spam posts.
|
| And I don't even go on Instagram every day.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It's how _everything_ on the internet dies. Advertising infects
| and ruins pretty much everything. Even normal websites are just
| as bad, they even have the exact same escalating ads problem.
| By now the web is unusable without uBlock Origin and Instagram
| 's problem is we can't install an ad blocker on it.
|
| There should be a way to speed up this cycle to make them fail
| faster. These corporations are making way too much money
| selling off our attention to the highest bidder as if it was
| their property.
| dbtc wrote:
| We should stop letting them have it as if it was their
| property.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yes. Advertising should be illegal. Failing that, there
| should be ubiquitous technology to render it completely
| ineffective by deleting ads in real time, destroying any
| and all returns on their advertising investment.
|
| One day someone smarter than me will make some machine
| learning thing that deletes brands from videos in real
| time.
| Animats wrote:
| > Advertising should be illegal.
|
| Arguably, it should not be a tax-deductible business
| expense for businesses. At least not beyond, say, 20% of
| cost of goods sold.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| And there's no use relevant/usable alternative on the horizon.
| Except a few utopian (or shall I say purist) ones.
|
| I guess one reason could be - even if someone wants to give it a
| shot they pretty much know that one of these behemoths will copy
| and drive them out, or buy them out but for that they need to
| have audience which is locked in vast corporate silos.
| cainxinth wrote:
| Instagram isn't over, but it is becoming passe, which is not a
| positive sign for an app built around making people look cool.
| svnpenn wrote:
| the login wall is what killed it for me. try this link in a
| private window:
|
| https://instagram.com/p/ClCFeRSjOXo
|
| if you hit refresh 5 times, even slowly, you get blocked until
| you login. I shouldn't have to login just to view a post.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| When the percentage of ads (sponsored posts/stories) is higher
| than the content you want to see, it becomes a pain to actually
| use the app, and you slowly use it less and less until you stop
| using it alltogether.
| TylerE wrote:
| Figures.
|
| It recently passed the mom test. My 70-something mom signing up
| for something is a strong signal it has peaked.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > something small but noticeable--like wearing a fedora--that
| immediately turns you off forever.
|
| There seems to be a thing that some people hate "fedoras". I
| think it's to do with the "Fedora guy" meme. The hat Jerry
| Messing appears in is not a fedora; it's a trilby.
|
| A trilby is a hat with a quite narrow brim, and stiffened; it's
| often woven and patterned. It can be made of just about anything
| (such as leather). You can't really mess with the brim; it's
| flipped up at the back and down at the front, and it stays that
| way.
|
| A fedora is a soft felt hat with a wide brim. The hats worn by
| both the cops and the robbers in 30's gangster movies are all
| fedoras. Felt hats are not woven; they're felted, and that means
| they have to be made of wool or fur (I guess a panama fedora is
| an exception, but then I think a panama fedora is just a panama
| hat that is the same shape as a real fedora).
|
| Where I come from, a trilby is associated with racecourse bookies
| and the criminal fraternity, as well as tacky seaside "kiss-me-
| quick" hats, made of something like cardboard. Fedoras, on the
| contrary, are stylish.
|
| They're also very functional. They shed rain like an umbrella,
| without dumping it down your neck. The only thing wrong with them
| is that they make a good aerofoil - you have to "hold onto your
| hats" if it's windy.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| This comment is imperceptible from a parody of a hacker news
| comment.
| brian-armstrong wrote:
| It perfectly captures the original characterization of the
| meme. I really hope they are in on the joke.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Indistinguishable?
| the_only_law wrote:
| I think it's a copypasta but I can't quite recall.
| nerfhammer wrote:
| no hits on google; it appears to be original
| onetimeusename wrote:
| well it's saved in my copypasta file now
| denton-scratch wrote:
| You are mistaken. If there's someone on the internet that
| agrees with me, then I'm surprised! I composed it myself,
| and I didn't refer to other sources.
|
| If I quote someone else here, I put it in quotes.
| oe wrote:
| "Actually, it's a trilby" is a point that was made
| already 10 years ago when fedora hate was at its peak.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Yeah I probably mixed it up with something on the same
| subject.
| Jun8 wrote:
| I usually just upvote and move on, not to add a noisy comment
| to the discussion; however you comment was so informative and
| well-written that I felt compelled to comment on it.
|
| For those who want to try the fedora, I recommend the "Indiana
| Jones" look (https://herbertjohnson.co.uk/collections/indiana-
| jones-colle...). I had one of these but unfortunately the
| parent's comment about them being aerofoils is true: lost it to
| a gust in the Grand Canyon. It fell tantalizingly close to the
| fence, re-creating the "Let it go!" scene :-)
| haunter wrote:
| The Atlantic is more over than IG
| Apocryphon wrote:
| And yet, here we are commenting on an Atlantic article and not
| an Instagram post.
| daveevad wrote:
| FWIW (not much) - I've never used IG or read The Atlantic.
|
| There is simply far too much stuff on the Internet that's not
| memberwalled or paywalled.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| unlike most digital apps The Atlantic has been around for
| almost 170 years. Based on that fact alone I'd give it a good
| shot to outlive not one but the next five to ten successors of
| IG.
| itake wrote:
| Walking through the mall yesterday, I was shocked to see 5+
| adults watch FB Reels / IG / TikTok. I think FB might be right
| about video being the future.
| yamrzou wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Ujltn
| jrnichols wrote:
| I think it's more accurate to say The Atlantic is over before
| Instagram is.
|
| We've been using Instagram more than any of the other social
| networks. Not making a TikTok account. YouTube lost me forever
| with their invasive ad push. Facebook lost me with its over the
| top moderation and irrelevant & useless ads. My Twitter account
| was suspended for a SNL quote.
|
| Instagram currently has _relevant_ and generally well done ads,
| if anything. The videos are also captivating and addictive and
| currently not littered with ads. I think that if they put ads in
| the Reels, they 'd drive away a lot of traffic. Right now you
| almost don't notice some of the ads, and the ones you do notice
| are generally well done. That's a big difference right there, in
| my opinion.
|
| Instagram has a lot of fun educational content & accounts. TikTok
| seems to lack that - it's a pool of misinformation more than
| education in my experience.
|
| Definitely going to disagree with The Atlantic here.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Atlantic has been around for over 150 years. The kids are
| moving away from Instagram, so unless Instagram is going to
| wait out the next generation and hope the grandchildren are
| going to make accounts, they are going to run into issues.
| syllablehq wrote:
| I think the key to a massively successful new social network will
| be a fallback API of just email/text.
|
| Why not let your shiny new social network UI parse any dumb input
| into a fancy thread format? Zero adoption friction. Federation
| baked in.
|
| Example: You run a mastodon-like service that can receive email.
| When it gets an email, it publishes a twirt with the contents.
| Truncates as needed.
|
| If it's a new email address, spin up new user with email
| username. No password needed, cause it came from the email
| address you own.
|
| Conversely, in the fancy interface, you can @soandso@gmail.com
| and it will email them for you. Doesn't matter if they've "joined
| twartordon." So it has a dumb-simple user growth model baked in.
|
| I've been promoting this idea for years in the man-yells-at-
| clouds format, but folks don't seem to get why it's so
| powerful...
| cardamomo wrote:
| SMS is how I used to use Twitter, back in 2008 or so. You could
| text 40404 with your tweet, and you could receive Tweets from
| that number too. It was great in that era before I had a
| smartphone, and it felt like something halfway between a group
| chat and microblogging. I miss that mode of interaction.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Have you ever ran a mail server?
|
| When you're blocking 99.93% of incoming messages as spam you'll
| learn to be more selective.
| [deleted]
| elgar1212 wrote:
| > Casey Lewis, a youth-culture consultant who writes the youth-
| culture newsletter After School, told me over email. "They don't
| want to be on it, but they feel it's weird if they're not.
|
| A "youth-culture consultant" trying to predict the future? How
| scientific
|
| Since this whole article is just one big hot take, here's another
| hot take: eponymous social media as a whole is on the way out.
| The only stuff anyone can put on eponymous social media is
| personal brand stuff (think LinkedIn), never anything actually
| genuine
|
| It's impossible for people to have real engagements under
| eponymous social media because anything they can say could be
| turned against them
|
| IG is predominantly just marketing, whether it's people showing
| off (like LinkedIn), pages trying to build a following with e.g.
| pet videos so they can make money from ads, annoying influencer
| "content", or actual overt ads
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| I don't know if IG is dead, but that Reels nonsense was an
| absolute fiasco. They kept showing me reels that were nonsensical
| and were only designed to lead engagement stats from questions of
| "what is the person trying to do here". Not to mention, the
| comments on many of these useless vids were always in Turkish. I
| don't speak Turkish, I've never been to Turkey, yet comments on
| videos were always in Turkish.
| viburnum wrote:
| I get the baffling Turkish videos too. It's a shame, instagram
| used to show me landscape architecture photos that I was
| genuinely interested in. And it doesn't matter how much I flag
| it as not interesting, the random videos never stop.
| Kiro wrote:
| I don't think it's a fiasco. I think Reels are better than
| TikTok.
| epolanski wrote:
| I know plenty of friends who can spend hours on reels everyday,
| my SO is an example, but most of my female friends are the
| same.
|
| I understand that modern IG may not be the greatest, but
| engagement wise their choices, at least for the 25+ tier, have
| paid off imho.
| Kiro wrote:
| Yeah, I can attest to that. I've went from barely using
| Instagram to spending a lot of time on it.
| [deleted]
| open-source-ux wrote:
| There are different segments on Instagram. Perhaps the "lifestyle
| blogger" or "influencer" has lost it's popularity. However, other
| audiences are still following different interests on Instagram.
| There are still thousands of artists (maybe millions) posting
| their art and illustrations, and still popular on Instagram.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Instagram, like many social networks, is what you make of it and
| who your friends are.
|
| Pick friends and who you follow well and it's a great experience.
| Pictures and video are equally supported, discovery is good,
| search is the best of any social network IMO.
|
| And pro-tip: if your discovery is too full of stuff you don't
| want, click stuff you don't want and click "not interested".
| It'll then remove similar posts from your discovery page in the
| future.
| system16 wrote:
| That's hardly the case anymore and it's one of the main points
| the article is making. It doesn't matter who you follow when
| well over half your feed is composed of ads, suggested reels,
| and two week old TikTok reposts from random strangers.
| pelasaco wrote:
| I hope not. I use it as a way to save my moments with my family,
| in the expectation that It will survive some good years, and
| therefore my kids can then watch the pics, videos, comments and
| get a better picture (pun intended) of the context of the photos.
| Much better than have it in a disk (if its survive) or printed.
| standardUser wrote:
| Instagram has functionality to download all of your content,
| including archived stories.
| pelasaco wrote:
| interesting, I didn't know that.
| standardUser wrote:
| Facebook too, just FYI!
| ncr100 wrote:
| This situation is increasingly a concern for me too, and I
| think replication and shared data ownership is the solution.
|
| Like everyone you care about having a copy of your data, and
| the copy always being up to date, perhaps encrypted so only
| those family you want to consume the content have access to
| those pictures too via user control.
|
| Anyhow it's sad that Facebook has so much of my family's lives
| hostage... Only there can I see what's up.
|
| I wish I could see a 'family' feed.
| pelasaco wrote:
| Yes, well i just have it private, i just have the real close
| friends and family.. thats my message in a bottle to the
| future.. I hope it reaches the shore, someday.
| pelasaco wrote:
| > Anyhow it's sad that Facebook has so much of my family's
| lives hostage... Only there can I see what's up.
|
| I'm not the social media kind of people, but I have some
| friends and family members, that my last words were through
| facebook. So as a communication tool, I see its value. Said
| that, I don't have the app installed anywhere. Just messages
| notifications via email.
| rglullis wrote:
| If you don't care at all about popular figures and just want
| to share content with people you actually know,
| https://movim.eu would be a much better alternative.
| [deleted]
| DanCarvajal wrote:
| It's because these apps are longer social in the original sense
| of social media. Most of my family's sharing of what would have
| been Instagram or Facebook posts are now in a WhatsApp group I
| admin. Sure I would have loved to get everyone onto Signal
| instead but the end result has been much better experience for
| us.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Group chats are wonderful for two very basic, core reasons:
| chronological and no ads.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| When Facebook bought it, they prioritized growth over the product
| itself. This kills the product.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-12-03 23:02 UTC)