Live data from Hacker News

Instagram Is Over

theatlantic.com

201–210 of 226 posts

Re: Instagram Is Over

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

YouTube figured it out, whether it was intentional or not. Let me pay money to not see ads. I watch a lot of YouTub & have a premium subscription. If I needed to watch unskippable ads, or any pre roll ads, I’d mostly stop using YouTube at all.

Advertising being illegal would be completely different story: no ads in the content itself. No 'sponsored' videos, no ads meant for other people (inside a browser in the video, on the street in the video).

Also, it's just not feasible to say 'let me pay money to not see ads'. You can pay for netflix, youtube, google search.. but what about the long-tail of all the sites you visit? I think Brave or somebody tried solving it with micro transactions but automatically deducting money also does not work that way because most of the content is trash I would not be happy to pay $0.005 for.

Re: Instagram Is Over

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many email providers who are quite profitable by charging just that and are not afraid of Gmail's absolute dominance.

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.

Neither. The analogy was to say that their point was irrelevant. The fact that there is a network with 1.5B users does not prevent of a smaller, pay-to-join, network.

Re: Instagram Is Over

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are describing is the broadcast model. Instagram is moving towards that model to compete with TikTok but that is exactly why people stopped using it because it’s no longer the Instagram they were using. Influencers (aka personalities) are only entertaining for a short period of time. They have constantly churn out new content to keep engaging users. It is because user don’t know them and are less attached. T…

I take that back the "lazy" comment - my mistake. In my defense, I haven't read those articles and came up with these ideas on my own. Agreed re broadcast model - that's an important distinction too vs the classic follower model. This is why, despite my best efforts, I still see content from strangers on my twitter feed. They know it drives engagement. > People, both influencers and users, will get burned out eventua…

> I got married this past year. In the lead up to that, there were tons of wedding planning videos. Now I get served a lot of married couple w/no kids content. That'll probably keep changing as I move through life.

This is an interesting observation. You are arguing that your taste for content will change preventing you from getting tired of the product.

My argument is more along the lines of the medium. People get bored of photos because it’s old and so they move on to short videos.

Both are non-conflicting. I do see how your argument will prolong the lifecycle of the product.

Re: Instagram Is Over

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

YouTube figured it out, whether it was intentional or not. Let me pay money to not see ads. I watch a lot of YouTub & have a premium subscription. If I needed to watch unskippable ads, or any pre roll ads, I’d mostly stop using YouTube at all.

No. Paying money not to see ads is completely backwards, it's just extortion. Why should I pay to avoid having my attention stolen or my mind programmed with corporation trademarks? It should be illegal for them to even attempt to invade my mind like this. My mind is mine, it's not a blank slate for them to insert their little brands at will. Advertising is aggression and ad blocking is self defense.

Paying any amount of money just drives up the value of your attention. If you can afford to pay off the advertising platform, then you obviously have enough disposable income to waste on the products the advertisers wants to sell to you. In the end, you're helping them segment the market and paying for the privilege.

In YouTube's case, you're paying to avoid ads but you're still being advertised to since videos now have hardcoded sponsored segments. You're also being constantly tracked by Google's surveillance. So you're still gonna have to use uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock if you want to avoid advertising or tracking.

Re: Instagram Is Over

#205
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mone…

> There should be a way to speed up this cycle to make them fail faster One way is to consciously leach off them. Use their resources while blocking all of their user tracking and display of advertising. A strategy somewhat stymied however by people who consider it their 'moral duty' to allow themselves to be brainwashed by advertising so as to 'support' these companies.

Yes, that is what I do. I don't even consider it "leeching" either. They sent me the web page for free, I simply deleted parts of it. They assumed I would look at the ads but unfortunately for them their assumptions just aren't going to work out.

It's ridiculous when I see the "moral duty" argument. Moral duty my ass, they aren't entitled to a thing. Actually it's our moral duty and imperative to oppose such corporate abuses. We are not cattle to be sold to the highest bidder. This neo-techno-feudalism bullshit must end.

AdNauseam is also an ingenious idea since it actually costs them money and directly drives down their returns on investment. Advertising should have negative returns.

Re: Instagram Is Over

#206
post #115

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 routin…

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…

> Chubby Checker always makes me laugh with the song Let’s Twist Again.

Can you explain the joke? I don't get it.

Re: Instagram Is Over

#207

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.

And for larger groups Discord is not horrible alternative. Just need to give up on tracking everything, but it is very good platform to share and momentarily discuss interesting things.

Re: Instagram Is Over

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

WOW would like to have a word.

WoW is the outlier that destroyed the genre. Looking at games released after it isn't pretty picture. Those before it fare better.

Re: Instagram Is Over

#209

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.

I get a lot of Turkish construction videos, and even more strangely, a lot of Turkish bus driver videos. No idea how I ended up in that cohort ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Post reply on HN