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Instagram Is Facebook Now

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Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#51

Post by epolanski »

athenot wrote: post #7

At this point, Instagram decided it wants to be a TV and just show me what it wants me to see, not my carefully curated feed. I'm letting my account die.

Delete it instead. I’ve been deleting any but text medias and I just can’t believe how much time people spend on it.

For reference, Instagram lets you see how much time you spend on the app, daily and on average.

I was shocked when I found out I averaged almost 18 minutes per day. I just didn’t feel like I spent so much time on it, but then you start realizing all of the pauses and voids it filled here and there and it was almost 20 minutes per day. I started watching the time my SO spent on it, almost two hours per day. Commuting? Instagram. Before falling asleep? Instagram. After coming home from work? Instagram. That’s 15% of her day, of her life, spent on that.

I cannot but have a grim outlook on all of this. Do yourself a favor and set some examples. This whole culture of attention seeking has to die.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#52

Post by 37 »

Gwypaas wrote: post #19

Pressing the menu button on the post and then hide I got the choice to hide suggested posts. Though in true Facebook fashion only for 30 days and not permanently.

Wow. That is probably one of the more underhanded things I've heard about them.

So they hope that you will forget, and in reality I'd bet most people do. Basically the same as a "Free 30 Day Trial" and then they take your credit card number. Of course most people don't remember and get charged anyway. (Which was deemed illegal in a court of law? Or am I just being hopeful?)

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#53

Post by dragonwriter »

anarchy8 wrote: post #11

Social media companies are trying too hard. People just want a chronological feed of things they followed. Nothing more. Stop trying to add shit people don't want.

> People just want a chronological feed of things they followed.

Feed consumers are not the paying customers.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#54

Post by eloisius »

andrew_eit wrote: post #35

Facebook aside you really see this across the board on almost any platform, that once the product reaches it's 1.0 stage, (where it is good, does what the users want it to do, and has realised its vision) it begins a process of gradual decay, as the focus of the product managers (now panicking to find some statistics to improve to show their bosses) shifts from "building functionality" to "increasing engagement/reten…

The irony is that all those engagement-boosting tweaks may work in the short term but ultimately kill engagement. You can trick my sleepy self to stay up scrolling through ads for a while, but I can tell what’s going on. Afterwards I feel bad, and your app becomes something I am conscious of being bad for me. I try to cut back and will probably quit entirely except for a few specific uses with careful safeguards around them.

I never look at the news feed on facebook. About the only thing I use it for is specific groups that exist for a reason, like trading bike parts or finding apartments. FB lost its entertainment appeal years ago, other than occasionally ironically enjoying a boomer meme.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#55

Post by ravenstine »

marcodiego wrote: post #32

I don't understand Instagram language. My GF uses it. It is full of digital influencers, people who make money because they are digital influencers. Young people with sometimes funny but generally pointless and most often ridiculous dancing moves to an equally ridiculous repetitive song. People buying expensive things, doing idiot things talking about uninteresting details of the uninteresting lives of equally uninte…

It's basically a porn site. Perhaps there's no nudity, but it's as soul-sucking and a waste of time as erotic pornography. The behavior of the user, the emotional high, and the business model really aren't so different.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#56

Post by potatolicious »

athenot wrote: post #7

At this point, Instagram decided it wants to be a TV and just show me what it wants me to see, not my carefully curated feed. I'm letting my account die.

This really is the worst part of Facebook's approach to products - it's constantly trying to inject "recommended" content into my experience, which ultimately IMO is the precise problem with this form of social media.

I don't want to use social media to interact with total strangers - I follow people I know IRL, or businesses I frequent, or just generally people/accounts that I've been recommended from sources I trust.

This "HEY YOU MUST MEET THIS STRANGER" thing that FB pioneered and that Instagram seems big into now is the root of so many problems. It encourages the kinds of negative interactions that define the FB experience (rude/abusive comments on one's posts from rando strangers? Hello!)

There's been much said about the coarsening of discourse post-social-media, and I have to say this constant drumbeat of getting everyone to talk to every stranger is one of the primary causes of it.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#57

Post by eloisius »

Is there a a federated Mastodon-like that replicates Instagram decently? I know you could just share photos on Mastodon, but I think the photo centric design and stories are what’s fun. At this point I don’t care about the network effects, if I could share bike trip pictures with 5 friends with something that works like IG stories I’d quit IG today.

Edit: maybe an answer to my own question is PixelFed but I’m still searching for a mobile app that supports it

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#58

Post by davee5 »

Instagram has slowly been deprioritizing content creation and promoting content consumption. This was clearest to me when they recently moved the Post button up to the top, out of the way, to make room for more consumption buttons within thumb reach.

For a good long time IG was the only place I could reliably see actual user-generated content. Moreover it was actual friend-generated content, and mostly they posted their actual (best, happy) lives.

With culling of the slideshow preachers, the media re-grammers, and the vacuous influencers, an honest social media experience can still be enjoyed-ish. But ads and re-designs will continue to chip away at the creative sharing and interactions that used to be the core UX until it's fully unusable for its original purpose.

Instagram now wants you to watch and scroll, not capture and share. Soon I'll need to take my creative sharing elsewhere, but where?

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#60

Post by 1024core »

eloisius wrote: post #54
andrew_eit wrote: post #35

Facebook aside you really see this across the board on almost any platform, that once the product reaches it's 1.0 stage, (where it is good, does what the users want it to do, and has realised its vision) it begins a process of gradual decay, as the focus of the product managers (now panicking to find some statistics to improve to show their bosses) shifts from "building functionality" to "increasing engagement/reten…

The irony is that all those engagement-boosting tweaks may work in the short term but ultimately kill engagement. You can trick my sleepy self to stay up scrolling through ads for a while, but I can tell what’s going on. Afterwards I feel bad, and your app becomes something I am conscious of being bad for me. I try to cut back and will probably quit entirely except for a few specific uses with careful safeguards arou…

> The irony is that all those engagement-boosting tweaks may work in the short term

That's when the promos happen and the bonuses are paid out.

> but ultimately kill engagement.

Too late. The PM's already jumped ship to the next gig.

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