Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy

It's interesting that they don't care, it's a Marie Antoinette-esque attitude to their lifeblood, and ultimately what will end their dominance.

The truth is they converted a free service into a pay service (the gas-lights creators and businesses into paying for visibility). The visibility, even when paid for is not very fruitful for many as well...

If you run a small business like a restaurant in the US, but get 40,000 views directed to your profile of people who live in Russia, it is unlikely to turn into a pipeline of sales that can sustain your business... This is just one way modern social apps gaslight people who are working very hard to build business... It undermines the very model of business success, to keep people working very hard... For no reward. These site let memes and non-business-related things flow all day on feeds provided they are not promoting anything, which makes the sites appear "full of life".

People seem to be catching on that it was all one big gaslight after they've spent tons of money on ads, they are slowly realizing that it's a rigged carnival game, but social apps like Instagram have pitted the rest of the Internet, and they constantly play a dictatorial role. The carpet can get pulled at any time if they don't take these complaints seriously though, and I look forward to seeing how it all plays out.

I really don't think TikTok is much better now either, these apps all use the technique of phasing adds and slowly reducing (external) visibility for creators, and just judging from comments I see on Twitter, the economy is imploding as a result.

With the economy as bad as it is, this current creator economy is not sustainable, and not fruitful. We'll all see the quality on these platforms decline as creators quit and protest, while platforms will burn up cash reserves and disappoint investors as their overhead for hosting and operations increase.

We've praised the arrogance of social platform leadership for too long and now it's coming back to bite all of us. The biggest worry is that there will not much to gravitate back to if social media implodes... But it's also a great opportunity for IRC and web sites to re-emerge, and for someone to invent hopefully something better than these giant platforms that really aren't "social" at all any more.

Maybe it'll show up in their usage numbers. I stopped using IG because it's near impossible not to prevent the sound from blasting from accidentally scrolling or clicking on a reel.

I feel like a product team that gave any shit whatsoever would give people a mute button that stays put. People use their phones in lots of different locations (with other people around). And phones are constantly blasting music at random points because of Reels.

Adam Mosseri has been in full damage-control mode for years.

Simply put, Instagram knows you're addicted and will make as much possible product change to make them more money while you struggle to get it out of your life given how personalized and predatory the experiences are becoming.

There is a natural conclusion to "growth" of engagement though. Everyone is competing for our attention given we sit on devices longer each year. I think it's averaging about 3 hours today on a smartphone. That's crazy to think about.

"Baudrillard was right"

- me, often.

Social media companies are in a bind. They're companies, so they have to grow or die. But they're invested in their current platform, and the likelihood of a particular innovation being successful is low, so it's tough for them to do radical R&D, they're limited to tweaking their current platform. This opens the door to startups, which can capture the new (young) users who aren't committed to a platform. A small number of startups succeed and experience exponential growth that starts cutting into the growth of the established players. The Instagrams of the world have to chase features to retain growth (a strategy ultimately doomed to fail), or they will have to acquire the upstarts. Because of its close ties with the Chinese government any kind of merger or acquisition with TikTok is fraught with potential problems. Instagram is taking the only path available to it, as unlikely to succeed as it is.