Are the Kardashians right about Instagram?

my grid looked terrible. I hardly ever see pictures from the people I actually want to get updates from my in real life friends, cool creators that I intentionally followed on Instagram so that I would see their posts, I almost never see them, And actually I hardly ever see photos on Instagram at all. What I do see are tons of reels short video clips from creators and influencers

that I don't follow and have never interacted with. And I don't know if it's just my feed, but it's usually not even reels about things that actually interest me, Like I get a lot of reels about cleaning hacks and different eating tactics that people are using, and anyone who knows me knows that I am not interested in cleaning. I am a total slub, although maybe that's just the

algorithm kind of shadily trying to tell me something. And it's also clear that a lot of these reels are just repurposed videos from TikTok, oftentimes one that I've already seen on TikTok making its way to Instagram weeks later. I also see tons of sponsored reels that are just video advertisements, and I see a lot of the same kinds of video advertisements in my Instagram stories too. So if you have noticed this, you are not alone, and

the ever powerful Kardashians have noticed it too. This week, Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner posted a meme reading, make Instagram Instagram again. Stop trying to be TikTok. I just want to see cute photos of my friends and celebrities like the Kardashians had historically had a pretty big influence in the way that social media platforms are run. In February, Kylie Jenner posted a tweet to her then twenty were point five million followers saying that Snapchat was basically over.

She tweeted, so does anyone else not even open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me? This is so sad? And just one day later, Snapchat shares had plummeted by six percent, and within a week, Snapchat had lost about one point three billion dollars, and back when Snapchat featured an offensive advertisement made by a third party that asked users whether they'd rather slap Rihanna or punch Chris Brown. You'll remember that Chris Brown was dating Rihanna and physically attacked her.

Snapchat apologized, but Rihanna was not having it. She responded, saying, you spent money to animate something that would intentionally bring shame to domestic violence victims and make a joke of it. This isn't about my personal feelings, because I don't have much of them, but all the women, children, and men who have been victims of domestic violence in the past, and especially the ones that haven't made it out yet.

You let us down. Shame on. You throw the whole appology away, And people listened, and they really did throw the whole app away. This whole thing ended up costing Snapchat about eight hundred million dollars according to Vanity Fair.

So there is definitely a precedent for big celebrities having a very real influence over social media platforms, which is probably why the very next day, the head of Instagram at A. Mossy, rushed to respond to the Kardashian criticisms of the app, criticisms that I feel really echo how

a lot of us feel about Instagram. Ryan Mack, tech reporter at The New York Times, pointed out that Mossy usually posts recaps or updates about what's happening with Instagram at the end of the week, but this time he responded the very next day, on a Tuesday. After the Kardashians posts, Max said that he would not be surprised at all of their criticisms were seen internally at Instagram as red alerts at the company needed to respond to immediately.

So let's get into his response, which frankly wasn't great. First, he posted a video on Twitter, which I feel like really tells you something that he needed to use a completely different platform to explain the changes, but in any event, basically he said, we know you hate what's going on with Instagram, and it's obviously awful, but too bad because

we're not going to change it. A big complaint is that photos, which was initially the purpose of Instagram in the first place, have been deprioritized by the platform's algorithm in favor of TikTok style video reels. So unless you're posting that kind of video content, your posts are likely not going to have a lot of reach. So if you've noticed that images that you've been posted on Instagram have not gotten a lot of engagement lately, that's what's

going on. Mosery spoke to this, saying that the platform was only trying to give users what they want, which is video content. That said, I need to be honest, I do believe that more and more Instagram is going to become video over time. We see this even if we change nothing. We see this even if you just look at chronological feed. If you look at what people share on Instagram, that's shifting more and more to video

over time. If you look at what people like and consume and view on Instagram, that's also shifting more and more to video over time, even when we stop changing anything. So we're gonna have to lean into that shift while continuing to support photos. The third thing I want to talk about is recommendations. Recommendations are posts in your feed from accounts that you do not follow. The idea is to help you discovered new and interesting things on Instagram,

and you might not know even exist now. If you're seeing things in your feed that are recommendations, that you're not interested in. That means that we're doing a bad job ranking and we need to improve, And you can ex out for recommendation. You can even snooze all recommendations for up to a month or go to your following feed. But we're gonna continue to try and get better at recommendations because we think it's one of the most effective

and important ways to help creators reach more people. And I hate, hate, hate that reasoning, because first, they basically use their algorithm to surface video content over photos, and they've been explicitly telling creators that they have to make video content if they want to perform well on Stagram.

So then turning around and claiming, oh, video it's just the kind of content that users like to engage with the most, So we're just giving you what you want, like they didn't actually put their thumb on the scales. Doesn't really work. And Instagram really has gone out of their way to tell creators that they must be making reels to perform well, even giving creators the ability to

monetize reels on the platform. So obviously prioritizing video content isn't just some happenstance way that the platform is trying to give users what they want. Also, I have a really hard time just taking Facebook at their word about how they say their users are engaging with video content. Let's take a little ship down memory lane. Facebook has a clear documented history of inflating metrics to benefit their own bottom line, and I guess another word for that

might be lying or might be fraud. I don't know. I'm the legal expert, but you know, not telling the truth about what's going on. We'll say Facebook had to pay out forty million dollars to settle a lawsuit involving

inflated video metrics. Their metrics were inflated by one hundred and fifty to so basically, Facebook told media companies that users are watching lots and lots and lots of video content as opposed to reading text content, which was not true at all, and based on that, companies then pivoted to video and did things like laying off writing staff to prioritize video producers. I was working in media at the time, and I actually saw firsthand the real world

impact and harm this cause to actual people. People lost their jobs and previously independent media outlets like College Humor and n Z on the Air either shrunk or in some cases folded all together. And I saw so many good people be pushed out of media because of this and just leave the field because working in a field where a company like Facebook can have so much control

over your livelihood by lying just didn't feel stable. And Facebook's punishment for doing all this, well, I told you that Facebook had to pay forty million dollars to settle this case, but that's just point eight percent of the company's annual revenue, so pretty much nothing. And this isn't even the first time that Facebook has misled people about

how users are engaging with their content. A lawsuit from one alleges the company lied to advertisers about how many people their ads could reach for years and they did this knowingly, and when a Facebook product manager suggested changes to make the metrics more accurate, Facebook managers rejected the

idea because the revenue impact would be significant. Oh or how about when Facebook decided to get into podcasts back in and it only lasted a year during which it seems like everybody was getting their podcast from Facebook only the company said that a quote error was causing those metrics to be artificially inflated. Before ditching podcasts altogether. Um so yeah, definitely trust what Facebook says about how users engaged with its content. At your own peril. Let's get

a quick break ut our back. And I think that's what it really comes down to. Instagram wants to do two things. One compete with TikTok. If you listen to the episode that we did with Abby Richards about how they worked with pr companies to make TikTok look bad, then you already know all about this and to generate ad revenue. They don't care if this is what their user base wants or what creators want. Their leadership is

basically just saying too bad. And you know, I love TikTok, but I don't make video content myself because it's just not me. I'm a podcaster, not a performer. I want to break something down and like a wordy thirty minute episode, which just does not always translate to a slick, thirty

second video performance. I also just think that short form video takes a lot more of a specific kind of energy and skills, and it's actually why influencers like the Kardashians probably don't like it very much, because it's one thing to be gorgeous and look perfect and polished and as still photograph. It's quite another to make a video where you have to be engaging, funny or smart and no shade to them, because it is definitely not my

skill set either. I remember when Instagram first started prioritizing video content, and I knew it was pretty much gonna be over for me on that platform. Instagram specifically told creators that if they wanted their post to perform well on the platform, they needed to post five to seven

reels per week. That's like a real every day. And I just didn't like the idea of trying to push myself to make a real every day, whether I felt like it or not, or whether I had something to say or not, just to appease whatever Mark Zuckerbird and Adam Osarri had arbitrarily decided and that they could change

at any moment. I can imagine it's probably not great for the mental health of creators who are being pushed to pump out more and more content if they want to make an impact and be prioritized on the platform. And it does just feel like we're all behold into whatever new thing Facebook and Meta decided to prioritize back in the day, Instagram was just this chronological feed that showed things like kind of an appetizing lunch or dinner

meals and cat photos. Then in they ditched the chronological feed in favor of the algorithmic one that we have now. Then to compete with Snapchat, they started stories, and when they rolled that out, that was where all the engagement

was at. Then there was their live streaming, and then ten they roll without i g t V to compete with YouTube, which they shut down earlier this year, and now we have reels, which honestly just feels like a less good clone of TikTok, And I guess I just don't understand what role Instagram is trying to play in my digital life. It's trying to compete with so many things Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube and doing none of them particularly well, even when the thing that put it on the map

was so simple, just images. Like I said, it's just not fun. And it's also a bummer because I used to love Instagram. It used to be pretty fun, writer Jess Scholl. And they did a great job of summing up how I feel about it, saying on Twitter, the only people who want these changes are advertisers. Congrats on turning a simple app for sharing photos into a dead

virtual mall. And since so many of the reals you see now are from people that you don't follow, have never engaged with, and who make content about stuff that doesn't interest you, I really can't imagine this is an

ideal situation for creators either non binary. Cause Play creator lizard Lee, who has about sixty followers on Instagram, tweeted about the platforms recommendations being so bad that creators like them get an influx of abuse and angry comments from people who don't follow them, who are furious that their content that they don't want to see or even care about, has been surface to them now. Lizard Lee says that they don't blame those users who leave those angry comments.

They blame Instagram for continuously serving up content and what seems like haphazard ways the people who do not want it. But if you're missing the chronological feed of people that you actually follow, like me, I do have one good tip for you. You can kind of go back to a chronological feed of people that you intentionally follow if you use instagram Ms following tab, which will show you

pose from people that you follow in chronological order. Just go to your Instagram home screen and tap the cursive Instagram logo in the top left corner of your homepage. Don't feel bad if you didn't know about this feature. I didn't know about it either, And I guess that's kind of my point. If we're having to do so much gamifying to make Instagram a platform that works for us and actually provides the user experience that we're all

looking for, isn't something wrong? Should we need to do so much just to get back to that simple Instagram functionality that users say they want. And for the head of Instagram, Adam o Serri, to make this desperate video on Twitter about how no, no, no, no, we know Instagram is terrible, but it's for your own good. Just kind of feels like the last gasp of a dying company that doesn't know what it wants to be. Anyway,

I really want to hear what you think. What is your experience on Instagram, ben Like, what are your thoughts on video content like reels? Do you love it? Do you hate it? I really want to know. Hit me up on social media, yep, even on Instagram. My handle is Bridget Marie in d C or shoot me and em out at Hello at tangodi dot com. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our

mark store at tangodi dot com slash store. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangodi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me bridget Toad. It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unboss Creative edited by Joey Pat Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amata was our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Toad. If you want to help us grow, rate and review

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