Instagram is absolute garbage compared to how it used to be. It’s still massive. Once people are hooked, it’s hard to wean them off. People were livid at reddit, but only a fraction of those who spoke up are here
Instagram is not actually worse than before, sure, the content there is worse, but people spend more time on it, and as such it is doing its job as a social media platform well
What’s changed about Instagram? I’m not familiar enough to know, but I don’t feel like I’ve heard anything all that controversial about it outside of Meta’s general “pay to remove ads” thing. I certainly haven’t heard anything about systemic enshittification like I have with Twitter, Reddit and TikTok; have I missed anything?
It used to be you saw what you subscribed to. Now every third posted is suggested. Many of them have paid to be suggested, not even talking about the ads which seem like every other post. It used to be about pictures, now it’s all reels, loud and obnoxious.
I know it doesn’t fix the fact the ruined main feed, but if you click on “Instagram” on the top left then select “Following” from the drop-down that appears, you will get a chronological feed of only the people you follow—no ads no suggested posts. Only reels if they were posted by someone you follow.
More than anything, it’s that people resist change. They’ll stick to what they are doing until sometime after it becomes very clear that they shouldn’t any longer.
It’s hard because once you got a place where all your friends are, it will be extremely hard to leave because it’s not like they’ll follow you and move to something like mastadon, pixelfed, or lemmy.
My friends are on Instagram, if I wanted to find my classmates, they would all be on there. My parents are on facebook, there’s no chance for those old guys to move to something else.
“Social media” just means a public place where the plebs can upload content and interact with other plebs via the internet without knowing a lick of html, Internet culture, or anything technical really. If they are so lucky, some might even be graced by the attention of a minor internet celebrity, the modern day patricians.
I agree, it all went downhill when we stopped having liturgy exclusively in Ecclesiastical Latin. Plebs can now use internet without knowing HTML too. How will they know their place?
When Internet communities were still a relatively niche thing and I (preteen to early teen) was already on the Internet, I had great dreams that in the future everyone would be on it and this would cause society to be awesome.
Everyone is now on the Internet. This has not made society awesome.
People seem to be selectively stretching definition of social media but are rather inconsistent in applying this label. Yeah, plenty of platforms and websites can be described as social media but we generally go with calling them by primary function. YouTube and TikTok are video platforms first. Reasons why Twitter and TikTok are going downhill are vastly different, reasons for their resilience or lack thereof will be very different too.
Unfortunately, if twitter has shown us anything, it’s social networks are ridiculously hard to destroy, even when actively self-sabotaging
Instagram is absolute garbage compared to how it used to be. It’s still massive. Once people are hooked, it’s hard to wean them off. People were livid at reddit, but only a fraction of those who spoke up are here
The average user doesn’t even know anything happened.
API? That’s like being gay or trans right?
Instagram is not actually worse than before, sure, the content there is worse, but people spend more time on it, and as such it is doing its job as a social media platform well
I hate it that being successful and being a piece of shit are not mutually exclusive
Enshitification is a milestone in the life of a product now.
What’s changed about Instagram? I’m not familiar enough to know, but I don’t feel like I’ve heard anything all that controversial about it outside of Meta’s general “pay to remove ads” thing. I certainly haven’t heard anything about systemic enshittification like I have with Twitter, Reddit and TikTok; have I missed anything?
It used to be you saw what you subscribed to. Now every third posted is suggested. Many of them have paid to be suggested, not even talking about the ads which seem like every other post. It used to be about pictures, now it’s all reels, loud and obnoxious.
Ahh, that’s the same path Facebook went down a decade ago then. Yay, capitalism…
I know it doesn’t fix the fact the ruined main feed, but if you click on “Instagram” on the top left then select “Following” from the drop-down that appears, you will get a chronological feed of only the people you follow—no ads no suggested posts. Only reels if they were posted by someone you follow.
Right on! I never knew that!
They make it basically impossible to know about unless you are told. 😩
If only you were commenting on an article that discusses what happened to Instagram.
They’re hard to destroy until something (people view as) better shows up. My buddy Tom from MySpace got out while the getting was good.
Digg on the other hand did not see it coming.
God I miss pre-Digg Reddit.
You’re back there now! Lemmy now is pretty much like Reddit pre-2008.
They were falling off as of V3, V4 deffo killed them off though.
Nowadays they’re (kinda) back as a daily dose website.
Dude cashed out right at the peak, then took his money and travels the world with it. Tom never has to work another day in his life.
Well time to make a good open source alternative.
Some kind of federation
In the proper space, that’s a real enterprise
More than anything, it’s that people resist change. They’ll stick to what they are doing until sometime after it becomes very clear that they shouldn’t any longer.
It’s hard because once you got a place where all your friends are, it will be extremely hard to leave because it’s not like they’ll follow you and move to something like mastadon, pixelfed, or lemmy.
My friends are on Instagram, if I wanted to find my classmates, they would all be on there. My parents are on facebook, there’s no chance for those old guys to move to something else.
TikTok is no more a social media platform than YouTube is. I’m puzzled why some people call it that and my only guess is that they’ve never used it.
“Social media” just means a public place where the plebs can upload content and interact with other plebs via the internet without knowing a lick of html, Internet culture, or anything technical really. If they are so lucky, some might even be graced by the attention of a minor internet celebrity, the modern day patricians.
I agree, it all went downhill when we stopped having liturgy exclusively in Ecclesiastical Latin. Plebs can now use internet without knowing HTML too. How will they know their place?
When Internet communities were still a relatively niche thing and I (preteen to early teen) was already on the Internet, I had great dreams that in the future everyone would be on it and this would cause society to be awesome.
Everyone is now on the Internet. This has not made society awesome.
You mean the websites where people can be social around media … is not a social media?
People seem to be selectively stretching definition of social media but are rather inconsistent in applying this label. Yeah, plenty of platforms and websites can be described as social media but we generally go with calling them by primary function. YouTube and TikTok are video platforms first. Reasons why Twitter and TikTok are going downhill are vastly different, reasons for their resilience or lack thereof will be very different too.