Time to Evaluate Our Relationship With Instagram
Years ago, I met someone at a house party who told me I needed to get on Instagram. “If you ever want to do anything with your photography, you need to be on there”, she said. I ignored her advice for a good while, but then, after a few rare posts, I finally started using it regularly in April of 2019. It was so cool to me that I could connect with people around the world as I shared my work, and I also was able to find a lot of inspiration by seeing what other photographers and artists were doing. Growing a following on the platform gave me a lot of confidence in my photography and certainly played a role in me leaving my career in software to become a full time landscape photographer. Sadly though, the app seems to continue in a downward spiral, so it seems as good a time as any to evaluate my relationship with it, and maybe you should too.
Before I was @zachcooleyphoto, my Instagram username was @spacyway, derived from a nickname my family had assigned me growing up. I started out slow, posting only a dozen photos in 2018.
Though Instagram’s profits over people model has never really been a secret, it’s becoming more and more apparent. In the past the app provided some good benefits to users, but those benefits have dwindled significantly as updates consistently demonstrate where their priorities lie and that they are more interested in money than in listening to user feedback and making it better for them. The app is no longer recognizable compared to when I started using it, and I have to ask myself how I feel about my relationship with it now. Do I still get the same enjoyment out of it as I did before? How do I feel when I use the app and afterwards? Should I change how I use it? Everyone is different and will arrive at their own conclusions, but I wanted to talk about a few things to consider with all of this.
In case you missed it last week, a petition to “Make Instagram Instagram Again” went viral, and several articles were published covering the backlash the company has been receiving. Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner also chimed in by sharing a post about the petition. Wow, I’m writing about the Kardashians in my blog, I definitely never saw that one coming! Seeing that they have a massive following, with Jenner at over 360 million followers (2nd most on Instagram), and Kardashian at over 325 million (6th most on Instagram), they hold a lot of influence, so it was a pretty big deal. It seemed the pressure was so high that Instagram would have to make some positive changes to satisfy users, right? Well, judging from a video response from the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, I’d have to say wrong. Instead, in more than one way, Instagram’s message has essentially been “Shut up, we just want to make more money”, and they’ve doubled down on things that have been most complained about.
This petition on change.org, encouraging Instagram to stop making changes that nobody asked for, while ignoring things that they have asked for, has over a quarter of a million signatures.
Feeds will be more and more recommendations, and less of accounts that you follow
One thing that a lot of users have been vocal about is that instead of seeing content from the accounts that they chose to follow, their feeds are being replaced with posts that Instagram suggests as something they might be interested in. Currently, about 15% of our feeds are suggested posts. Despite the negative feedback on this however, we learned last week that the amount of suggested posts will at least double by the end of 2023. In other words, about one third of what you see in your feed will be force-fed content that you didn’t choose to follow, while you miss out on posts from accounts that you do follow and want to see. Now, there is a way to snooze suggested posts for 30 days, by going to the three dots in the upper right of a recommended post and selecting “Not interested”, and then choosing “Snooze all suggested posts in feed for 30 days”. Despite calls to make it a permanent option though, it sounds more likely they’ll actually remove this ability altogether.
Feeds will be more and more video, and less photos
There has also been major backlash against the push of video from Instagram. In the response from Mosseri mentioned above he said, “I do believe that more and more of Instagram will become video overtime…we’re going to have to lean into that shift”. He fails to mention though, that since the beginning of Reels (short form videos on the platform), creators have received a message loud and clear that if they want to survive on Instagram, they need to post more videos. And perhaps more importantly, Meta pays users to create Reels. Creators can sign-up for a bonus program which can pay thousands of dollars a month for videos that they share. In other words, the “shift to video” is not because it’s what people want, it’s because it’s what the powers that be at Instagram want. That is of course because videos take more of our time, and the longer they can keep us in the app, the more money they make. I am holding out hope that they’ll at least give an option to filter out videos, since a poll Mosseri did showed that more than 75% would like that option, but that would be surprising considering their track record with listening.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, created a poll to see if users would like the option to filter their feed to just photos. Will it actually happen?
There’s no indication that reach will improve
Creators large and small have noticed a significant drop in reach on Instagram over the past 1-2 years. Reach is a metric of how many users see your post. Aside from some of your followers, your posts can also be seen by others through the explore tab, hashtags, or recommended posts mentioned above. Many think that the reach drop is due to the push for video, and I imagine this is what Instagram wants us to believe, however the drop has been so drastic that I can’t imagine that accounts for all of it, and it appears likely algorithmic updates are at play. The app is putting up walls between creators and their audiences, and posts are now seen by a much smaller fraction of their own followers than before. Just as an example, I shared the image below in July of 2021 and it was seen by nearly 11,500 of my followers. Last week as an experiment I shared the same photo, with the same caption and hashtags, but this time it was only seen by about 3,500. This was a drop in the reach among my own followers from about 20% to 5%. I generally see a more significant drop in reach to non-followers, and this is a pattern seen for all types of posts across the board for me. Stories reach is even worse, and I’m lucky if even 1% of my followers see them.
In July of 2021, this photo was seen by about 11,500 of my followers. A year later I shared the same photo and it was only seen by about 3,500.
Is this reach drop because Instagram wants people to pay for sponsored posts, or does it have to do with them pushing video? Or something else? Does it really matter? The fact is Instagram has put up walls that weren’t there before, and by doing so continue to kill the “social” part of social media. The decrease in reach has lead to a reduction in all metrics, which means less engagement. While in the past it was fairly easy for anyone to have their work seen by others, it seems you now have to be in the top 5% of your niche to get significant reach (no source or science behind that number, just a guestimate based on personal observations). Since Instagram lacks any real support system, Adam Mosseri’s posts have been somewhat of the place for user complaints to land. With each video or photo he shares, regardless of the topic, thousands upon thousands of comments can be found about the reach drop, but he’s never really addressed it, and I doubt he ever will.
Many users take to Adam Mosseri’s posts to express their feelings about the direction the platform has been headed.
What should we do?
To me, not considering the worsening issues of Instagram is akin to staying in a toxic relationship even though you know it is just that, and somehow expecting things to change. And the problems I’ve mentioned here are only some. For length, I cut out some discussion of other topics, such as increased ads, spam bots, unfixed bugs, and hacked accounts, and I’m sure there are plenty of others I didn’t think of. Some people may not care at all about the problems, but if you’ve read this far you’re probably not one of them. I personally want to care less about Instagram. If I cared as little about it as I wanted to, I wouldn’t have even written this blog post. My personal plan is to post maybe once a week, and to spend less time overall using the app. I want to focus more on improving my photography and developing my business. Everyone should think about what is best for them because as with everything, there’s no solution that is best for all. For those that enjoy creating and consuming videos on the app, or those that are fine just being entertained, you may not even need a strategy of change, perhaps it’s working great for you. But, if using the app makes you to feel demotivated, it might be time to change things up, whether that’s simply using the app less, or trying TikTok or Twitter to diversify or as a replacement. Are you going to change your relationship with Instagram? Let me know in the comments!
