What's up with Instagram? (probably @)

[neverfstop]

Is it just me or has it gotten noticeably less fun lately?  I'm mid40's and started on Facebook, to connect with old friends & relatives.  But very few people I know use it anymore besides schools for PTO events or my mom's generation who is still watching/posting nonsense conspiracy stuff and commenting on random stuff.  Never did Ticktock or twitter....

I've been on IG forever & it used to be a great place to share photos. Then came the video & reels, which i never really used, but liked watching some.  But recently, it really feels like 90% of the content is suggested videos & not people I actually know or follow.  I keep getting sucked into watching art/paint projects, home organizing/reno projects, blooper reels, or people with large families.  I want to go & see accounts I know and not random stuff that will suck me in for half an hour.   

I really wish we could curate our feed more.  I just glanced now & every other or every third post is suggested or sponsored.   

[elleblue]

It got taken over by Meta/FB. That's what happened. And I agree. I used to really like IG but it's become extremely irritating with the amount of sponsored or suggested posts. I basically only go there and look up specific accounts to check in periodically and don't even bother with my regular feed.

[charlatti]

You can turn off suggested posts. I think you have to do it every 30 days, but it has worked for me. Settings then suggested content, or I think if you click the dots on a suggested post you can snooze them there.

My algorithm apparently just works well for me — I usually see new posts from people I actually know first and then posts from accounts that I follow for fun content.

[Jalapeñomel]

I also left IG because it sucks now.


EDIT: that's not entirely true, I probably check it once a week.

[waverly]

Yes, FB and Instagram are mostly just ads and maybe a few random accounts that I follow, and few suggested accounts.

I don't think either of them are that helpful for keeping up with people in my life. If there is a specific person then I will try to remember to check their profile, otherwise sometimes it will just randomly show me something a week later. I know it is a week later because it was a post specific to a time period, for example, back to school. Or most likely, not show me them at all.

I was a late adopter to IG with not a ton of people on there, so I am mostly there for funny reels.

[Scout'sHonor]

Agree that both FB/IG are mostly ads now. I still use IG for following animals and craft accounts I enjoy.

[penguingrrl]

I never got into IG, but I have the same complaint about FB. I liked it for connecting with people I actually know, but now 90% of it is ads crouched as “suggested for you.” I’ve stopped going on entirely. They pushed ads and bullshit content so hard they’re quickly losing their audience I think, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them collapse because of it.

[heygrey]

My complaint with IG is that it thinks I really want to see tradwife and purity culture content. Hard pass. I’m here for the dogs and the occasional home reno channel.

[breezy8407]

I turn off the suggested for you thing on IG every month I think. I still use it daily, but don't do reels so I am probably avoiding the ads. FB is mostly garbage for me.

@@
A lot of school related accounts have moved to IG, so I use it to keep up with the school district, HS sports teams, events etc.

[AdaraMarie]

Sept 25, 2024 11:48:48 GMT -5 breezy8407 said:

@@
A lot of school related accounts have moved to IG, so I use it to keep up with the school district, HS sports teams, events etc.

@i just joined a month or so ago to try to keep up with my kids school and teams and it is pretty hard to see what I want. It is annoying and I find myself not even opening the app.

[Nugget T. Brain, The OG]

I spend my SM time on either FB to keep up with friends/family, or Reddit/TikTok. I haven't used Insta in probably 3 years.

[tiki]

I use IG to follow random (often business-related) accounts, so it's basically 100% ads for me - some I chose, some Meta chooses.

[Nonny]

The word you are looking for is enshittification. It's insidious and impacting basically everything right now.

This might be better as a separate thread, since it isn't just Instagram, but here's a (long) article from Financial Times by Cory Doctorow from earlier this year. (A friend of mine linked it, and it wasn't paywalled for me, but she mentioned it was for her H, so YMMV.)
www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3ftuiWaZGDOvJoos_8GX_-gAtDNjRC-PJlQ4tN33R_dmBtDWmjuuWDuLI_aem_nSthVqonZlid8C3_MXaE4Q

[eb777888]

I only watch stories now. There really is very little interaction on my feed as I'm posting less and so are my friends. This is probably due to what you're describing.

I vowed last night to pull way back on scrolling Facebook. It is all political rage bait and I'm not going down that road anymore.

[neverfstop]

Sept 25, 2024 13:30:16 GMT -5 eb777888 said:

I only watch stories now. There really is very little interaction on my feed as I'm posting less and so are my friends. This is probably due to what you're describing.

I vowed last night to pull way back on scrolling Facebook. It is all political rage bait and I'm not going down that road anymore.

I think I also post less generally and then my friends post less, so there's less content from people who aren't trying to market their brand or be an influencer or sell something.

I wish we could have more curation controls. I'd happily play for a place where I could control what I saw...

[ssmjlm]

Sept 25, 2024 11:48:48 GMT -5 breezy8407 said:

I turn off the suggested for you thing on IG every month I think. I still use it daily, but don't do reels so I am probably avoiding the ads. FB is mostly garbage for me.

@@
A lot of school related accounts have moved to IG, so I use it to keep up with the school district, HS sports teams, events etc.

One of the things in the Virginia digital policy that they posted a draft of is that social media cannot be the main method of communication because they don't want kids to be forced to use it for information.

[wildrice]

I still go there daily out of habit, but I probably spend less time there than I used to. A few other random complaints about it - I hate how it resizes pictures so it's hard to post some things and I often give up. Like I tried to share a photo last week that was of 3 people and it just kept shrinking to crop the two on the sides mostly out. I don't know why it does that?

Also, people seem to mostly just post stories now. Which is fine if you are on every day, but I feel like I miss stuff and some people I may want to share my things with may not see them if they don't happen to look within 24 hours.

All social media is full of ads and suggested content these days. Even TikTok has become a ton of ads, but since the videos are longer it somehow seems more worth scrolling past them. It sucks to scroll past 6 IG or FB adds just to see one brief post from a friend. I hate it.

[sent]

Sept 25, 2024 13:58:41 GMT -5 neverfstop said:

I wish we could have more curation controls. I'd happily play for a place where I could control what I saw...

I was thinking a few days ago that this might be coming. I had to make a separate list in Notes of all the recipe and food pages that I want to follow because otherwise I don't necessarily get shown their content and I will forget about them!

I use mostly FB. I'm active in professional groups, our town groups are active, and I have friends who still post on FB. They might also post on Instagram but I stopped using my personal account over there. I have an account for the office that I check periodically. Someone else in the office creates the content for the Instagram page which is only photographs and occasionally a story. This is done solely so we have a digital presence when people "do my research" for us online. We stopped trying to get in front of eyeballs because I've read that Instagram shifted its focus to reels to compete with TikTok and is doing a terrible job at it. 

Otherwise I don't understand Instagram. I really prefer FB because you can have conversations with people in groups.  With Instagram, it feels like you are only conversing with the main account person. Also Instagram accounts feel like a lot of bragging to me but that might be the accounts I engage with people and office in my profession. 

That said, FB is constantly trying to push junk groups and reels in front of me. I get a lot of Jewish content, I'm not totally sure where that comes from. I also get a lot of comedians in my reels I think because there was a thread on here about comedians a while back and one of my friends was texting regularly around the same time about going to see various comedy shows. I don't otherwise search for Jewish content or comedians in regular life for FB to think that's what I want to see. I also get Disney (understandable), furniture rehabs (questionable), recipes (I like those) East Asian parents (right continent, wrong area), parenting in general (understandable), and recently I started getting more baby content (strange) but I stopped engaging with those and it seems to have backed off. 

[elleblue]

Nonny - I love Cory Doctorow and his term enshittification because it so perfectly describes everything in our modern world.

[StrawberryBlondie]

My feed is almost entirely figure skating content. Which makes sense because I think I follow way more figure skating accounts than anything else.

[pugz]

I turn off suggested posts every 30 days when they start to pop up. I mostly am in stories and scroll a bit, but most of the stuff I wanna see is in stories.

[glw]

My feed will get that way if I don't keep up with marking most suggested content as "Not interested." If I do that consistently, the only things I get are things I'm actually interested in, which is very few specific topics. I do like getting some suggested content in addition to just the people I know.

[lostrn]

I don't really "get" Instagram, I'm old and prefer Facebook lol. But I do have one that I made to basically follow the lives of the dogs I've fostered, share posts from the volunteer organization I work with, and I will periodically post family stuff.

On Facebook I can make lists so only certain people see certain posts. Is there a way to do that on Instagram? I don't mind my inlaws seeing some posts but I don't need them seeing everything.

[icedcoffee]

My instagram somehow only shows me Ukrainian beagles now which is so oddly specific and also hilarious. I kind of love it. LOL

[Scout'sHonor]

Also, is threads a Zuck bot experiment? Or because I don't follow many actual accounts? The feed is all these ridiculously over the top drama things that make no sense.

[Velar Fricative]

Facebook is terrible and I only use IG now because that’s where my kid’s middle school posts stuff, but it really sucks too.

Sadly, being able to control the feeds ourselves does not make these social media companies money.

[lilac05]

I suspect that they’re gearing up for making it subscription based. So you can get “ad-free” or something similar for a certain amount a month. Or use the current version for free.

It really sucks. I’m working to get my very small business of the ground, and I rarely post on IG or FB anymore because they’re so cluttered. Everyone is pushing some “coaching” or “marketing” program and it’s all the same DFY stuff or “creators” who are just creating ads for Walmart and Amazon. I don’t want to clutter people’s feeds and be a part of that, but I’m struggling to find a different way forward for what I have available to spend right now.

[neverfstop]

Related, but URGH...this sounds awful. Why would I want to see a bunch of fake crap!?!?

www.axios.com/2024/09/27/meta-ai-posts-facebook-instagram

Driving the news: As part of its slew of announcements on Wednesday at its annual developers conference, Meta said it's "starting to test content imagined for you by Meta AI that will appear in your Facebook and Instagram Feeds."

Meta said it will generate some images based on a user's interests and others that feature their likeness "so you can be the star of your own story and share your favorites with friends."

[glw]

I cannot imagine a single person wanting that, neverfstop! WTF.

[ny96]

Sept 26, 2024 11:53:03 GMT -5 icedcoffee said:

My instagram somehow only shows me Ukrainian beagles now which is so oddly specific and also hilarious. I kind of love it. LOL

That’s funny. I closed my Facebook account a few years ago and then last year opened a new one, just for Facebook marketplace. I don’t have any friends, but it’s really scary the people in my orbit it suggests to me. And now I’m getting tons of dachshund posts which is really odd because I have never shown any interest in dachshunds.