By Karl McDonald
The company wants to catch up with TikTok’s astonishing engagement metrics, but it’s losing users who just want to see their friends’ posts
Revolution is in the air at Instagram. The app thinks it knows what’s best for its users, and it’s making changes to increase the amount of time people spend scrolling. But its users, usually a placid bunch by social media standards, are finally making a stand.
A torrent of criticism from top influencers such as Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, as well as disappointed ordinary users, has forced Adam Mosseri, the company’s chief executive, to address the masses, issuing videos in which he admitted his platform’s latest changes are “not yet good”.
There are even user strikes planned, with more than 200,000 people signing a Change.org petition asking the company to roll back changes and nascent plans for people to avoid using the app on Monday to prove the point.
The fury stems from a change Instagram has instituted in recent months, which has transformed the photo and video sharing platform for many users. For influencers, who are not shy about using their voices to complain, many have had their posts shown to fewer people, which has consequences for the revenue they can bring in from sponsors. For ordinary users, characteristically, the app’s home feed shows fewer pictures posted by friends and more videos posted by accounts they do not follow.
This is not an error, but part of the plan. The machinations of enormous, faceless tech giants can be obscure to ordinary people trying to simply stay in touch with friends, and users do frequently bristle against any alteration to their familiar experience, though over time they tend to either adapt or vote with their feet.
But in the case of Instagram, the idea behind the changes is clear. Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder and CEO of Meta, Instagram’s parent company, wants to take on TikTok.
The problem is as follows: young people are…
