That always makes me giggle, when i hear people say, "FB sucks, i don't use FB anymore, i'm only on Instagram...."

Instagram is also becoming a monotonous and boring platform to use. The more ads and other junk features they cram into it, the less people will want to use it.

Instagram used to be my go-to social media, and the millions of images of peoples dinners didn't annoy me, but I find myself using it less and less because of the non-chronological feed. I still don't understand how it can possibly be better than a chronological one.

If anything I wish they would give an option in the settings to make it chronological

Generally if they keep a feature it means that the majority of people were more engaged by it, so the algo feed is probably increasing engagement across the board but alienating a few users.

This. When companies start looking at features and changes through the lenses of a metric, everything follows that metric. I'm sure that drives more engagement, therefore it's enforced on everybody.

Unfortunately they're not measuring abandonment or annoyance. Metrics like these are the short-term gain investors of today tech, always looking into the today and ruining the tomorrow.

It's not so specific as alienating a few users, it's removing an intuitive UX feature in exchange for the ability to control the order of the content you see, which can increase engagement.

The same things happened with Twitter and FB. There are some tweets I've seen dozens of time because the algorithm think it is relevant, but I just want the latest thank you.

Instagram continually shows me photos from 2-3 days prior. I get shitty ads on a regular basis. The quality of the platform is definitely degrading quickly.

Pinterest for the long game!

I've never understood the pseudo-ephemerality of instagram. Even if you save stuff, or like it, the interface makes it very difficult to recall stuff from more than a few days ago.

Oh god no. I hide their results from google searches, that horrible wall they put up to make you sign up to read something or look at an image.

How do you do that? I couldn't find a good way when I looked. It is incomprehensible to me why Google supports the incredibly annoying bait (high res image for Googlebot) and switch (sign up to see high res in browsers) tactic of Pinterest. That shit certainly doesn't make me sign up, it makes me hate Pinterest.

Chrome extension called Personal Blocklist (by Google) There's a Firefox port, I'm not sure where the data goes.

> I've never understood the pseudo-ephemerality of instagram. Even if you save stuff, or like it, the interface makes it very difficult to recall stuff from more than a few days ago.

Hypothesis: these businesses all monetize # of interactions (even if CPI is low), which they want to maximize by structuring interactions such that there is constantly new content that encourages obsessive checking. A sense of ephemerality of content reinforces that behavior ("I have to check because there is new content and it may be gone if I wait to check").

Well, yeah, because they're talking about FB the product, not FB the company. From that point of view, "FB sucks and I'm using Instagram now" is a very valid statement.

That was me for a while before the cognitive dissonance caught up :)

Well yeah, FB owns IG now, but it wasn't always that way.

> I have this theory that they've noticed that the platform is being used less and less, and is why we're getting so much ads mixed with our friends' posts. They're milking the cow before it dies.

Um, no. Facebook remains the most popular app in the United States with a comfortable lead. It's surpassed only by its own Whatsapp and Messenger globally. I think I read that in terms of time spent in an app, Facebook still beats Whatsapp, but I can't find the stat right now. Facebook just crossed 2 billion MAUs this year.

Its advertising revenue grows at close to 50% a year. Obviously part of that is showing more ads per user, but it's also growth in app usage. I'd say the cow keeps sprouting new udders and they are feverishly trying to keep up with attaching the pumps.

That doesn’t necessarily prove your point. It’s possible that advertising and install counts are lagging indicators, and that there are leading indicators like engagement showing trouble down the road. Anecdotally I’ve heard that this is the case.

when you think about it, it's a bad simulacrum of the social encounter and experience. i use mine as a blog for issues and feelings that have provoked a big response in me but it's far from ideal

It's only a matter of time. When was the last time you thought about logging onto MySpace?

> I feel bad writing that because I like facebook.

Why? It's a terrible company and Zuckerburg is kind of a jerk.

Any personal anecdotes in support of your attack?

I love Facebook. Do you have a problem with that?

Why would they have a problem with that? Your Facebook love doesn’t contradict the statement.

But WhatsApp and Instagram are not that big a percentage of overall revenues. And if they do monetise them further, they risk becoming annoying to use like Facebook. Just realised something - as Facebook extracts more money from users it actually delivers LESS value to users. This is somewhat different to normal business where you earn more when you deliver MORE value for your users/customers.

This is exactly the problem with advertising as a business model. You necessarily have to make your product worse to make more money, and it becomes a balancing act. Subscription SaaS services on the other hand are free to make the product as clean and easy to use as possible.

> I have this theory that they've noticed that the platform is being used less and less

I have no data to substantiate but I doubt if it is true. May be in first world but coming from India, I believe there is still a huge market for Facebook. Internet literally means WhatsApp and Facebook to masses who are now getting affordable mobile phone and data connectivity.

There's really no evidence of VR being the future. It's useful for some games and visualization / design work but I expect that 20 years from now we'll still be using flat 2-D displays most of the time, supplemented by AR for mobile use.

Is Instagram healthy? Anecdotally it seems like people have the same problems with it as FB.