[themagician]

lolwut?

Instagram today is completely different from the way it started. The app is different, the community is completely different. Literally nothing is the same. It doesn’t even resemble what it once was. It has completely devolved. It may very well be the most toxic property out there. It’s hard to imagine something more phony, optimized soley as a way to waste your time tapping away giving “likes”. Watching somone use Instagram is one of the most depressing things I can imagine in terms of human social interaction.

IG was an app designed to share photos in the moment. It was a digital Polaroid. That was a pretty cool idea. That core feature is essentially gone and so is the community around it.

IG now is a platform of the least common denominator. 90% of the posts are garbage spam that takes the form of meme/image macro hybrid abominations designed to get likes. I don’t even really know what you call them. They aren’t videos, or flops or even memes. The best phrase I can think of is digital media noise. IG is like some kind of weird digital static. If you wanted to broadcast incompressible nonsense into outspace the best way to do it would be broadcast the explore tab on IG.

[spike021]

>Instagram today is completely different from the way it started. The app is different, the community is completely different. Literally nothing is the same. It doesn’t even resemble what it once was. It has completely devolved.

>IG now is a platform of the least common denominator. 90% of the posts are garbage spam that takes the form of meme/image mace hybrid abominations designed to get likes.

I guess you aren't following the right people or accounts, then.

I've seen plenty of engaging and cool content. I've even become friends with people from the opposite side of the world. Basically a modern kind of pen pal.

And this all happens while I'm still able to share photos in the moment.

The only thing about IG I absolutely hate is the non-chronological feed. It's ridiculously terrible, even reloading before I've seen the most recent posts.

[compcoffee]

>I've seen plenty of engaging and cool content. I've even become friends with people from the opposite side of the world. Basically a modern kind of pen pal.

I did that before with Facebook, and Twitter, and forums, and WoW, and MSN, and ICQ and IRC and MUDs...literally any form of online interaction. This doesn't set Instagram apart; it happens despite the fact it's a hyper-optimized advertising app.

[spike021]

Yeah, I've done that on all of those as well.

But you know what? People I've met on IG aren't the types I would've found elsewhere on those other networks. And why does "setting it apart from the others", to paraphrase, have to be an issue? In that sense IRC and forums are exactly the same.

And no, hyper-optimized advertising app would mean I'm constantly seeing ads for products that fit what I like, which is further from the truth than any of this. I rarely, if ever, follow brand accounts, so I rarely, if ever, am subject to "hyper-optimized" advertising.

[kccqzy]

> 90% of the posts are garbage spam that takes the form of meme/image mace hybrid abominations designed to get likes.

IG is like twitter in that the more effort you put in to curate the people you follow, the more rewarding your timeline is. I never look at Explore, but I look at the pictures in my own timeline and enjoy them.

[deevolution]

My instagram feed is filled almost exclusively with cat photos, its a good time kill...

[nasredin]

"Cat photos"? Right...

[TheRealDunkirk]

Have you ever really thought about the feed you get from Twitter? It's a jumbled mess of insight, humor, flaming and trolling. The context switching required to jump from comedians to programmers to politicians to pundits is EXHAUSTING.

The thing that Twitter most needs is some way to find and sort by topic or category. And I haven't been able to find any resource to help me find accounts like the ones I most enjoy. You'd think, with all this machine learning that's supposedly going on, someone would find a way to lead me to the people I would enjoy reading, based on some "seed" accounts.

I'm on about my 12th account, and I barely pay any attention to it, because it's just too much work to put what I'm reading into context, and then switch it 72 times to catch up my feed. And I follow less than 200 accounts! God help the poor souls who have thousands of follows.

I say all that to ask: Do you know any way to find accounts with high signal-to-noise ratios that might align with other, known accounts? If Twitter wants more "engagement," THEY ought to be the ones offering tools like this.

[kccqzy]

> Do you know any way to find accounts with high signal-to-noise ratios that might align with other, known accounts?

Just follow a small set of people. When those people retweet interesting stuff from other people, follow them too.

[matthewmacleod]

I admit I’m surprised to hear that.

I don’t use Instagram that often. Sometimes I pop on to see pictures of friends’ kids, holidays, parties, or events. That’s basically 90% of what I see. I post holiday pictures and interesting things I cook, because some other people like to see them. Sometimes there are ads in my feed, and for the most part they’re inoffensive products that I even sometimes look at!

It’s just kind of the least offensive form of social media I can think of. I’m surprised to hear that so many people hate it.

[kevstev]

Agreed. I realized a few weeks ago that I really like Instagram because everything on there is original content- pictures/videos from my friends and a very few select people I don't actually know that I share interests with. And that's kind of what I want to see- the highlights of what people are up to in life.

No one is sharing content from BlatantlyBiasedNews.sketchydomain all day, memes, or other crap. Its the stuff I see less and less of on FB, and why while I still check FB at least daily, its starting to feel more like going through the motions than something I enjoy doing.

[themagician]

I mean, I’m sure there’s a small amount of real photos on IG but I don’t know why you’d post them there. All of the hashslag is about getting discovered. It’s like competitive spamming.

If you find IG wholesome you’ve been living under a rock. I find almost everything about IG offensive these days and it’s only going to get worse.

[matthewmacleod]

Yeah, I have to agree with the sibling comment - how are you coming across this content? I never see any of it. Al actual photos taken by actual people I know. As far as I’m aware it hasn’t really changed since I first used it years ago, though I’m sure there are a million features I ignore.

[jobigoud]

It sounds like you need to clear up your subscription list.

[nickrivadeneira]

This has not been my experience, nor my wife's experience. Instagram shows more of what you click on, so it's entirely possible you are clicking on trash, so they're showing you more trash. From what I've seen, it does a pretty good job of reflecting your viewing habits.

[wlesieutre]

Mine shows me literally everything that the people I follow have posted, but maybe that's because I don't follow a ton?

When I've scrolled through all the new posts there's a nice big green checkmark and it says "You're all caught up."

If something isn't what I want it to show me, I don't follow that. Works great, no weird view optimization algorithm as far as I can tell.

[nickrivadeneira]

Sorry, should have clarified that I'm referring to Explore. I figured if someone is complaining about bad content on Instagram, it's in reference to content they don't have control over.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

> 90% of the posts are garbage spam that takes the form of meme/image macro hybrid abominations designed to get likes.

I'm very active on Instagram and 90% of my feed is various electronics, art, and software projects, and family and friends' travel photos and photos of interesting stuff they come across in their day-to-day lives. If you don't like the idiotic meme accounts don't follow them!

What's missing vs. the Facebook experience is the politics, the rants from elderly relatives, the absolutely excessive poorly-targeted advertising (even in Messenger now!), and completely irrelevant posts that I'm only seeing because someone I know has liked or commented on it.

I expect all of this to change and for IG to be brought more in line with Facebook now there's nobody left to defend it from Zuckerberg. A sad day indeed.

[stef25]

The only social media account I have is IG and just use it to follow brands, business and artists I like. It's quite good for that. Example, a record shop will post noteworthy new arrivals (video with sound) and I frequently buy the things they post.

[dnautics]

Ig's content, imo is still way better than Snapchat or whisper or even Facebook. The annoying thing is that ads are extremely obtrusive (this is a new thing). At least on FB the don't occlude your ability to enjoy other content.

[iamthirsty]

Well you must not spend must time on Snapchat, my friend. Literally 50% of the app (the pane to the left) is only your friends. If the content is bad for you, then that is a you problem, not a platform problem. You can't even scroll your IG feed for more than a few minutes (at most) without an ad or "Sponsored Content".

Personally, I actually even find some of Snapchat's "For You" section useful as well — I usually only see stories from NYT, WaPo, or other news/informative content providers. The ads are surprisingly avoidable, and much less prevalent than Instagram.

[dnautics]

Fair. However, I keep getting pushed mostly dailymail and tabloid stuff (possibly because the only person who has added me is the admin), and the UI is terrible and it eats my battery. Instagram is more sensible, at least on those fronts, and doesn't trawl my phone contacts to make suggestions - my fb friends are a far better representation of the sorts of content I'd like to see versus my phone list.

[Kiro]

I haven't seen a single meme in my Instagram feed ever. It's 100% photos my friends take.

[newscracker]

(As the commenter to whom you replied) I agree with your points and observations, but which social network doesn't devolve to the basest desires of humans — the desire to be liked and appreciated, wanting to show off a perfect side, etc. — after reaching a certain volume of users (and more so after being taken over by a large company that thrives on such content)?

Instagram has been susceptible to the same effects, but as others have mentioned, with a small and curated list of people to follow, it's probably a nicer place to be (compared to other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc.) when it comes to online social interactions.