[imagesource:here]

Instagram: we hate how much we love it…and sometimes, we just hate it outright.

In the mire of professional influencers and targeted digital advertising that’s now prevalent, is the popularity of the photo-sharing app doomed for a decline?

That seems to be what this Mashable piece is insinuating.

Users of the Meta-owned megalith are beginning to take note of the fact that their once personally-curated feeds – which historically showcased moments in the lives of their friends, or celebrities they chose to follow – are now littered with the faces of strangers spearheading sponsored posts.

In the past, it’s possible that people have been less aware of just how many ads they’re thumbing through because Instagram’s algorithm tailors what we see to our ‘interests’  – that is, based on the profiles we search for and visit most frequently, among other things.

But this year, in particular, frustrated users have started to notice that the proliferation of arbitrary visual bunk on their Instagram feeds isn’t even pertinent to their lifestyles.

Or, as is described in this Washington Post op-ed, the converse drives people to distraction: hyper-targeted content starts to dominate suggested posts, to the extent that Instagram users start to feel uncomfortable with the extent to which the app is monitoring their online movements and exchanges.

Indeed, at one point it seemed like everybody with an iPhone (or an equivalent) was wondering out loud whether their phones’ inbuilt microphones were actually recording their conversations and, worse still, selling this date (via Apple) to third party companies.

The hysteria actually reached an apogee in 2019, when Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri reassured people outright that:

“We don’t look at your messages, we don’t listen in on your microphone, doing so would be super problematic for a lot of different reasons…”

But as this piece in Mic explains, the app has multitudinous other ways of monitoring and responding to users’ data, even buying information from independent data brokers.

Given the rising popularity of alternatives like TikTok, could it be that – in putting the app’s profitability before its users’ pleasure – Instagram is shooting itself in the proverbial foot?

We were once drawn to the app because of its unique photo-editing capabilities, and because it was a novel way to connect with friends and strangers.

But if the experience starts to resemble that of flicking through a magazine where advertisements outnumber editorials, Instagram’s at risk of losing not only this generation of users but the next tranche of Gen Z as well.

[source:mashable]