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by keewee7 1262 days ago
It's not just the filter names. Their UI also looks identical to Instagram.

Why are they copying Instagram 1:1 when the Instagram UX sucks so much?

3 comments

Instagram's UX sucks because of all the ads they stuffed it with in the last few years, not because of interface troubles.
I dunno. It’s kinda crummy in some ways. Maybe because I’m not a streets ahead kid with friends to teach me all the ways of the Instagram? Off the top of my head:

- you’re supposed to know that various edge swipes get you things

- I have two feeds apparently? There’s the home page and the middle bottom button

- you can’t do most things to an existing video, you must record it live, in Instagram, for most of the effects (eg. my kids did a hilarious Christmas morning dance and I realized it would be a good Boomerang)

- I’ve had multiple comedians DM me and then say “sorry I meant to reply to the comment!”

- beware that adding comments to those videos at the top are actually DMs

- almost every video cuts off 1 second early

- almost every video has been cropped to fit the aesthetics of my tall screen so I can’t even read the

All of your complaints are about the Reels offering, which isn't what Pixelfed cloned.
the same reason that chrome and firefox look like each other way more than they did originally

the same reason GNU/Linux distributions like Xandros used to mimic Windows XP

the same reason Microsoft Windows originally looked a lot like MacOS

the same reason MacOS looked a lot like what was going on in PARC before them

because users come to your platform with expectations and perceived affordances, and if you can get them to switch others will too

ie

if your UI isn't defined by lawyers, it will adapt to the psychological models that actually live in the heads of your users if you're developing it properly

I don't think it does. You may be looking at some old screenshots I guess.