RealAboutInstagram – a replica highlighting harmful strategies

Hello HN! I'm a creative technologist and recently decided to develop RealAboutInstagram, a replica of the current About page of Instagram replacing its content with their current harmful strategies used on the platform and the negative impacts of social media.

The information on the website is extracted from resources such as the Digital Minimalism book by Cal Newport, Ted Talks, and many others that can be found in the footer.

This is one of many projects for my career, and I appreciate anyone taking the time to read this and check out the website.

You can check out my other projects at https://santiagoaguirre.netlify.app/

Thank you for your time!

RealAboutInstagram – a replica highlighting harmful strategies
realaboutinstagram.netlify.app

While the site is pretty cool I don't think it will convince anyone because it argues both from the perspective of someone who isn't on IG to people who aren't on IG. Nobody who's on IG actually thinks about IG like this. As crazy as it sounds to people on HN people seem to generally like the ads on IG. Stories are about posting and seeing what your friends are up to just like Snap stories, Reels are just IG posts but in TikTok format.

This kind of content is dangerously close to "kids today and their rap music" or "it's those violent video games." If you want to persuade more than just my parents whose only experience with IG is what the nightly news says about it you have to show how my posting my vacation photos and scrolling through is bad for my mental health. Because it absolutely is but it doesn't touch on why in a way that's actually relatable to IG users.

It’s interesting, but before reading the explanation I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. If you never went on the Instagram "About" page you don’t understand what this is refering to.

I think it is somewhat unprofesional to not be on your own domain and own the address to your slice of the internet. If you can't afford it, it's ok, but using custom domains with Netlify is really easy and free.

You expect single open source developers to provide solutions. That’s like telling you to lay off plastic straws to save the planet.