Mosseri agreed that Instagram\u2019s new feed sucked and its recommendations might be bad<\/a> and then told us it wasn\u2019t going to get better. Instagram no longer cares about photos.<\/p>\nAccording to Mosseri, Instagram\u2019s users are shifting to video. That may even be true! Certainly, I did not want to switch to video and consequently stopped using the platform as much. Meanwhile, people who use Instagram as a way of making money were forced to post more videos to remain in people\u2019s feeds. Doesn\u2019t seem very organic, if you ask me.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s funny to see Instagram Facebookify because no one wants to use Facebook either. (I quit in 2006, rejoined briefly to post Verge<\/em> stories before we automated our social process, and then quit again.) People talk about Facebook like it\u2019s a drag, and it\u2019s increasingly how they talk about Instagram, too. <\/p>\nThe platform changes are upending people\u2019s businesses for two reasons: one, because they have to rejigger everything yet again<\/em> to try to please the algorithm, but two, because Instagram is driving parts of the audience away. I mean, if I want to watch a TikTok, I will, you know? I literally came to Insta for the cat photos.<\/p>\nBut Facebook is in a tough position. It\u2019s renamed itself \u201cMeta\u201d after something that doesn\u2019t yet exist and has to figure out how to keep the lights on while it \u201cbuilds the metaverse\u201d or whatever. (What is the metaverse\u2019s killer app, pray tell?) And Apple\u2019s privacy push \u2014 \u201cAsk app not to track\u201d \u2014 has cost $10 billion in lost Facebook revenue<\/a>.<\/p>\nSo the changes suck, and Mosseri is letting us all know that Facebook doesn\u2019t care that the changes suck. It\u2019s just trying to squeeze as much growth-hacky engagement out of its legacy platforms as it can. High-quality photos \u2014 the original value proposition of Instagram \u2014 matter less than scammy ads for weight loss, speed (oh, sorry, \u201cADHD treatment<\/a>\u201d), and ketamine<\/a>. Quite a way to fall from that first Michael Kors ad<\/a>! Seems like Instagram is, in some important sense, over.<\/em><\/p>\nLook, I\u2019ve quit various social media sites before. I know this feeling well. Instagram is desperate, and no one likes you when you\u2019re desperate. The question is, mostly, where I will go. BeReal is more fun<\/a>, but it loads slowly, and I hate notifications. Twitter isn\u2019t really meant for cat photos. Can someone just build a simple photo app that isn\u2019t sleazy and let me know where it is so that my friends can join it? I have a lot of cat photos I\u2019d like people to look at.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n