Instagram rolling out algorithmic feeds to some users

The algorithmic feed is a compromise between adding value for the user and revenue for the company.

Feeds based on followers, the followed, hashtags, likes, and other data about a user's habits are not increasing value for the user in terms of discovery or catching up on what was missed.

In a chronological feed, if you missed something, you know when and seek out that section of time. The nuances of discovery are diminished when you trust Instagram to do that for you.

If you follow a bread maker and enjoy seeing their photos on occasion and you don't tap the heart every time, or haven't tapped the heart much in the past, you may hardly ever see their posts again. You'll have to find them, and look at their feed, which takes away from the nuance of enjoyment you once had.

The curation one builds for their feed is not always a conscious decision. You have your own process for making an enjoyable feed. Then someone else's idea of this process steps in.

A foreign feed steals your once familiar orientation.

I would appreciate a toggle between their idea of my feed vs my idea of my feed.

This is 100% a play for increasing the types of ads for Instagram, but I think it will hurt the platform in the long run.

When I started using snapchat, I thought one of the coolest features was that I could see everyone who viewed my story. Suddenly, I knew my audience and everyone who viewed my snaps. It made me want to post more on snapchat because I knew I had an audience.

I've heard from multiple Instagram users that their recent photos have not gotten the same amount of likes or views as they used to before the algorithm change, and I think this will cause users to be discouraged from posting to Instagram. It almost gives the platform an illusion that it is on the decline, regardless of if it is true or not.

> Their fears stem from a similar change that Facebook, Instagram's parent company, did a few years ago, which significantly reduced the organic reach that brands and influencers get on the platform.

I'm sorry but "brands and influencers" can all go take a flying leap. They're the exact thing I'd like to filter out of my online experience. For me, Instagram and other social platforms are only interesting to the extent that they provide a view into the long tail of human experience, and the massive surge of eyeball-seekers into these spaces only serves to dilute and pollute.

Instagram may get a lot of guff for being vapid and shallow, but historically they've been uniquely resolute among social platforms in their refusal to make life easy for brands and influencers. They've only partially succeeded, and I suspect this move is a compromise attempt to divert motivated attention seekers out of people's daily feeds, or at least into a revenue-generating funnel.

The fact that i know what i see and what other people see is one of the major points i see to using Instagram instead of Facebook for sharing stuff.

Would it be within HN rules to change the title to something less clickbaity? From "Instagram Made a Huge Change – And It's Not the Logo" to perhaps "Instagram rolling out algorithmic feeds to some users"?