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Comment by prawn | Hacker News Reader

Instagram was trending down but has taken a dive in recent months. Just an unbearable proportion of ads and lame suggested content. You end up playing whack-a-mole trying to get it to stop showing you rubbish.

It had been a not-insignificant part of my work but now I just resent using it at all.

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Probably because what makes TikTok attractive isn't it's dark features that only Instagram would think was important, but how amazing it is at learning your interests with the lowest amount of required input (just swiping down quickly or not after a new video starts).

I was one of those people that thought TikTok was a modern garbage machine that only produced low quality dancing videos of young girls for zoomers. But then I read on HN that you just need to commit for a little while and it will learn what you like.

I was amazed at how much this is true. I'm now getting Scott Manley-esque space news, tech stuff, hyper local restaurant recommendations, real gameplay of game genres I actually like, etc. Basically what took me years to carefully subscribe to on Youtube was done in a few months on TikTok and it only seems to get more relevant (note: YT always still wins in pure intellectual signal vs noise).

The whole addictive thing is obviously an issue, especially for kids, but I'm an adult who grew up with tech and I've learned how to carefully balance internet/life, so it's mostly pure upside for me.

But I don't want any content recommendations. I don't like the idea of infinite channels and endless content to flood my skull. I use Instagram to keep up with what friends and family are doing. I just want to see the content my friends put up. Not the things they like, not similar accounts, not similar industries, not hot topics. And when I've caught up, I want to see the previous content, not unrelated accounts and promotions.

I work in travel content and on my work account I want to see the content of my clients and prospective clients I've chosen to follow (to see the work they're selecting or which videographers they're using), but instead it pushes everything else on me.

More than ever, these apps are about consuming content - ever increasing amounts of it. I seriously resent that.

Apparently you and I are outside the market. This is exactly what I used Instagram, Facebook (when I was on it) and Twitter for. Only Twitter remains. There was a brief period (around 2005-2008 I think) where the majority of the people I knew IRL (incl. family) were online talking to each other, showing each other what they were doing, no political discussions, no fighting, it was a flash in the pan in the end. I don't think we can ever go back to that as there was no money in it.

Unfortunately, unless your family and social circles are all within some particular niche, you're at the mercy of the platforms exploiting the masses. I remember when Twitter was a bit like early Instagram, hanging out with friends, then the bulk moved to Instagram and just left business people and sub-interests. I'm lucky in that my Twitter feed is not very political/enraged like much of the US, so it's a pretty decent place for me.

I used Instagram everyday, mainly to follow local restaurants and shops. The new feed is awful and made me uninstall it, because it’s now:

- 1/3 ads

- 1/3 suggested content

- 1/3 actual content I followed, among which more and more tended to be sponsored

That’s just not worth my time.

Exactly. It ends up feeling like almost everything you're watching is advertising.

If you use Instagram passively like television, you're watching usually-polished content interspersed with ads, which probably feels OK. Maybe this is the majority of people. If you use Instagram just to follow friends, unless their content is all very polished (it generally isn't - it's them walking their kid to school or a basic photo at the beach) then your feed feels like:

  1/6th mediocre (but relevant to you) content
  1/6th creator-type friends promoting places/things
  1/3rd suggested content
  1/3rd ads

Not a great ratio at all. Especially when the suggested content has been ramped up and the ads feel like they've doubled or tripled. Went from my favourite platform to most despised, which is quite an achievement for the Meta brains-trust.

Yup, they finally did it. Same thing they did to FB to get me to leave is now leading me to leave one of the apps I really loved to use when it first came out.

Yeah. It's horrible. I'm on there because that's where my audience is for now, but I despise both the platform and company to a degree that's hard to express in words.

It's weird. You'd think that inspiring customer loyalty by building a good product would be considered good business, but even as I'm typing that, I'm realizing how comically naive it sounds. Meta and its ilk are 100% about lock-in (and, to no small degree, addiction); you ultimately realize you're not using them because you want to, but because you have to. (Unless, of course, you're willing to sacrifice being able to share your work with friends and build a following. Some people are. I'm not.)

I've found that blocking every user that displays video ads, and reporting the ad as "offensive", does seem to cut down on garbage after a while.

I always assume that abusing the "offensive" report option would put me on a list where they just crank up the ads even more. I do tend to report some ad categories (supplements, cults, etc) as scams though.

I think if it's "I think this is offensive", they don't take any action—that just tells their algorithm what sort of thing you don't want to see.

For the more specific/serious stuff—reporting scams, violence, etc—they'll investigate (or pretend they did) and report back to you, but I don't get any of those responses for the "offensive" option.

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