'Stop Trying To Be TikTok': User Backlash Over Instagram Changes

Instagram's head defended the app against a user backlash, after the social network launched a series of changes intended to make it more like its arch-rival TikTok. The Guardian reports: The changes, which include an extremely algorithmic main feed, a push for the service's TikTok-style "reels" videos, and heavy promotion of the TikTok-style "remix" feature, have resulted in users struggling to find content from friends and family, once the bread and butter of the social network. "We're hearing a lot of concerns from all of you," Adam Mosseri said in a video posted to Twitter. "I'm hearing a lot of concerns about photos, and how we're shifting to video. We're going to continue to support photos, but I need to be honest: more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time. We're going to have to lean in to that shift while continuing to support photos."

The Instagram boss also defended the platform's new "recommendations" feature, which puts content from people users do not follow on to their feed. "The idea is to help you discover new and interesting things on Instagram that you might not even know exist," he said. "You can snooze all recommendations for up to a month, but we're going to try and get better at recommendations because we think it's one of the best ways to help creators reach a new audience and grow their following. He added: "We're going to need to evolve, because the world is changing quickly and we're going to need to change with it."

Instagram's makeover is widely seen as a response to TikTok's continued growth, in particular among younger American users. [...] By boosting algorithmic recommendations, allowing users to "remix" posts (akin to TikTok's "Duet" feature), and promoting full-screen vertical video above photos, Instagram is attempting to turn its main app experience into something similar to that of the Chinese-owned upstart. In a widely shared story, Kardashian clan member and social media star, Kylie Jenner, called on the service to "make Instagram Instagram again." She added: "Stop trying to be TikTok, I just want to see cute photos of my friends."

UPDATE: Instagram Is Walking Back Its Changes For Now

All the Big Ones

[cstacy]

Instagram is for old people, like my parents! funn-eeeeee

Re:

[CaptQuark]

"The idea is to help you discover new and interesting things on Instagram that you might not even know exist," he said. "... we think it's one of the best ways to help creators reach a new audience and grow their following."

Imagine if they did this to email. "We are sending you more random messages because we think you might need more targeted junk in your inbox. Our primary concern is to help people that spend their lives on Mailchimp to create new victims and spread more of our content."

Re:All the Big Ones

[Luckyo]

It's actually for women of all types. It's basically a mirror of Youtube, which is a massively male dominated social media platform. You'll find everything from little girls to old women networking and posting on Instagram. It's why when there's talk about "social media platforms causing mental health problems", instagram "harming young girls" is at the top of the list every time.

Heck, "instagram face" is now one of the big things that plastic surgeons offer. For those not in the know, that's a set of operations that would make your real face look like the typical instagram filtered face many women use there.

Re:

[AmazingRuss]

and then women will put filters on their instagram faces, and surgeons will offer instagram instagram face, and so on, until instagram face becomes this:https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/b/b4/CASSANDRA.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130830133312

Stop trying to be TikTok

[NedHamson]

The "idea" is to try anything to make more money. More, and more and more ads. More videos, More suggested this and that. Maybe time to go back to Tumblr.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Ads are already littered every 2-3 posts on your "Feed" and every 2-4 "stories" then there are "suggested reels" which pop up just about as frequently though i havent counted the exact cadence. instagrams algo devalues photos (the original intent of the app) and even videos that don't contain music (aka reels aka tiktok) so now if you want to post a photo, you make a "Reel" with that photo and it lasts for a second or 2 before going gray and giving you the option to "watch again"

instagram is so hostile towa

And nothing of value was lost

[stevenm86]

With terms like "lean in", "discover", and "recommendations", it's hard to imagine why a sane person would want to use the service at all.

Re:

[arglebargle_xiv]

#FirstWorldProblems. #something-or-other. #something-else. Smash that like button. And have I told you about Grammarly yet?

I love the Condecention from Facebook

[JenovaSynthesis]

"You don't know what you want. We tell you what you want." That's literally what Facebook is saying here. And then they'll wonder why people migrate away from the service. Funny thing is Tik Tok is successful because some moronic American corporation bought Vine to kill it. And then here comes Tik Tok resurrecting it again.

Re:

[Carewolf]

It is how they ruined facebook as well. I can't even find hidden settings to seeing notifications from my friends there, it is all algorithmic generated crap, that makes the service useless.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re: I love the Condecention from Facebook

[retchdog]

microsoft office was never not ruined.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[AmazingRuss]

Most people are completely devoid of any intrinsic personality. They need this service.

Re: I love the Condecention from Facebook

[retchdog]

yeah, slashdot is much better. we have both kinds of personalities: emacs users AND vim users.

Re:

[Opportunist]

If you bring that wall of text for fitting before the weekend, you can have it shortened by Tuesday.

Dude, learn to write in a way people would actually want to read it!

Re: What's Instagram?

[retchdog]

if you manage to read it, his whole screed is about how he is entitled to the features he likes (in a zero-price service) remaining the same forever.

it would be a bit hypocritical if he started taking others into account when writing that.

Re:

[muh_freeze_peach]

TL;DR = Instagram is too mainstream *pushes glasses up*

Re:

[Oligonicella]

So much to say and yet presented in a way that no one wants to read it.

Learn to be succinct and learn how to form paragraphs. It comes across like a drunk uncle in the corner rambling on.

The next generation of sub-millennials

[paravis]

Gotta hand it to TikTok and Instagram, they have created a worse version of Millennials, and it is only going to get worse from here. Now people are fighting over who is ruining the worst generations of human life better than the other. Goodness, can the just all be gone for crying out loud? I am so sick of hearing about TikTok and Instagram. They are worthless.

Re:

[AmazingRuss]

Ok gramps, time to empty that colostomy bag... you're getting sour.

Yo Snap!

[Huitzil]

I heard Snap needed a new biz model - desperately - PIVOT TO PHOTOS

"in a video posted to Twitter"

[ayesnymous]

Odd way to try to reach your users.

Re:

[Opportunist]

Isn't it? A normal person would have put it on TikTok.

Re:

[iampiti]

The new recommendation algorithm wouldn't show this video to Instagram users

Re:

[laxguy]

yeah theres only talking, no text covering the whole screen or popular music

Facebook knows it's fine

[93 Escort Wagon]

Zuckerberg and company know that none of these people are going to leave the platform, they'll just complain for a while and then go brain-numb again and keep using the service. So the Facebook execs will just keep up the lip service for the shortest duration necessary.

Another time they pretend to really care

[stoundmire]

> The idea is to help you discover new and interesting things on Instagram that you might not even know exist This is another way to see we'll make discovering your friends' posts more difficult so you spend more time on the platform, and we get better time spent metrics.

Please get a clue

[Opportunist]

It's the "WoW killer MMO" all over again. Every MMO out there desperately tried to be like WoW, only to wonder how and why they failed despite being just like that most successful MMO out there.

Not despite. BECAUSE.

If I want TikTok, I use TikTok. Why? Because it not only is just like TikTok (duh), it also has all the other reasons people go to TikTok. Mainly that it has the users and contributors that people want. Your social media platform does not. What your social media platform has it a different set of users, most of them using your social media platform for one key reason: They HATE TikTok. They don't want TikTok. How I know? Because they would be using TikTok if they wanted TikTok.

Now you go and make your platform like TikTok.

Where in that course of studies for business administration is that mandatory lobotomy, I ask?

Re:

[Carewolf]

They problem is managers who get huge salaries but have nothing to do because they are actually needed, let alone at those salaries. So they try to make business steering decisions they have no skills or knowledge making, and this is the result.

Re:

[WarlockD]

Not sure if there is a good solution for all these social platforms neither. I mean I liked rss feeds because I could get a list of the stuff I wanted to look at in the mooring, but I got nieces on Instagram, family on Facebook and friends in Discord. I just want to spend 30 min to catch up rather than the 2 hours it takes.

Re:

[chefren]

Exactly, the same with Slashdot. The reason to visit are the duplicated stories and anonymous cowards, that environment you cannot really get anywhere else.

Re:

[Opportunist]

Well, you can, but most people are on both boards anyway, so...

You'll survive without them

[Joce640k]

Am I the only one who doesn't have either Instagram or TikTok?

I have Facebook, but not on my phone. Web browser only.

Re:

[bsdetector101]

No you're not. Never saw anything I wanted to use. Mostly useless stuff, I don't want to know what anyone does in their life or it's fake info anyway. On FB with limited use. Had quit it but looked like someone was trying to take it over. Opened it back to regain control. I share NO info on it.

For the Algorithm!

[Koen Lefever]

an extremely algorithmic main feed

Imagine a programmable digital device without algorithm...

The change of the meaning of the world "algorithm", and the near mystical and magical connotations it has got the past few years due to (I guess) how marketeers and influencers use the word, actually bothers me.

Users are not the customer

[iampiti]

All this does again is show that the users are not the customers of social networks.
Instagram is worried about losing audience to TikTok so they change the product to be more like TikTok. Users, as it's normal, complain about such big changes and Insta's boss tells them "sorry but we're not going back". Terrible. And keeps happening to many apps/websites/services because they want to be like the new trendy one.
You can change but if you modify the core of your service too much users WILL complain

My God

[Thyamine]

It's a dark day indeed when I agree with a Kardashian (Jenner).

It's not just Insta

[OfMiceAndMenus]

Someone needs to tell this in a loud, clear voice to YouTube also.

Fuck YouTube Shorts. If I wanted to watch a TikTok I'd go to fucking TikTok.

Re:

[laxguy]

yes, this too. fuck youtube shorts. fuck them right to hell.

*facepalm*

[cmdr_klarg]

Instagram's head defended the app against a user backlash, after the social network launched a series of changes

If you're having to defend changes to your platform from your users, odds are that those changes were not wanted and are going to drive your users away. If they wanted TikTok, they'd be using TikTok.