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Comment by whalesalad | Hacker News Reader

This is a fools errand. Stop using it for a week. The product is a literal MVP right now and lots of stuff is in the pipeline. You’re spinning your wheels on this when shortly you’ll be able to see a different timeline.

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That may be true, but I really don’t think I want to.

It’s Instagram in words, and Instagram by and large is an awful, fake and vapid place.

Threads might be decent software, but the content is horrible.

What is so bad about Instagram? It's my most used "normie" platform. I don't choose to have fake friends or follow awful creators, so I don't see that on the website.

I use instagram occasionally but it’s mostly for eye candy and maybe a few will post stories with vids, it’s really a pure form of internet junk food.

If Instagram is eating junk food then Twitter/Threads is trying to find bits of steak in a pool of toxic waste

It’s not intellectual.

I love it, it’s great for workout and vacation pics and seeing what people you know are up to. I get the feeling Twitter powerusers hate it

I follow a few of my favorite bands and celebrities and my friends and it works well. I wish there was an easy way to filter all reels though. I don't like the tiktok type of experience.

Instagram is my most used platform. All my closest friends are there. All the top tier meme content is there. Group chat is lit.

It’s not a fake and vapid place. All social media are just vehicles to communicate with other people. If you feel it’s fake and vapid you’re just following the wrong crowd.

but that’s kind of the thing with threads. no matter how curated my follow list is, my feed is filled with the type of content the OP calls out. there’s no “following-only” feed.

Yeah, I used threads for a few minutes and quickly discovered that’s it’s just not a product that caters to me… yet. Right now I think it’s probably only great if you’re really into the e-celeb scene. But this is Meta/IG we’re talking about, I’m sure they’ll get their near-freaky level of algorithmic content targeting precision in there soon enough and my feed will become full of stuff I care about. I’ll check back in on it in a couple months.

I discovered that it doesn't cater to me before actually using it. Googled how to use it on desktop, found that there is no way other than emulating the mobile app. Not for me, I pass.

I expect that they'll add a web client this year. And then we'll be able to add whatever filters we can dream up (and implement)

> But this is Meta/IG we’re talking about, I’m sure they’ll get their near-freaky level of algorithmic content targeting precision in there soon enough

I keep hearing this. "Oh! The Algorithm gets me so well! It's so freaky!" about TikTok, IG, everything really... But let me tell you how my IG feed goes:

I get 3 posts at the top, posted by my friends. I like all of them – even if I didn't like it. I'm just pleading to the algorithm to show me more from the people I care about. I then scroll for another 30 seconds through endless muck of golden retrievers, frat boys, etc. I'm hoping to see another post from my friends, but it just doesn't come. I leave the app for another week, until my friend shows me a post she made 2 weeks ago that was never shown to me.

The algorithm makes social media a painful experience I avoid. I've enjoyed Mastodon, Snapchat, and BeReal MAGNITUDES more... Platforms without one, platforms where I'm actually "social".

I primarily use Instagram to follow artists, but yeah, my experience is about the same as what you listed. Before I took a hiatus from it, I just started going directly to my friend's pages to see if they shared anything new, and directly to the artists' pages to see if they were selling prints. Better than being forced to look at ads for essential oils vape pens.

Same here. These days I only use Instagram to post art made and rendered during my commutes and consume similarly fashioned content. I haven't reached the point in "making prints available" nor have the desire to at this point in time.

Twitter unambiguously separates out the feed of people you're following and the algorithmic feed ("For you") in separate tabs (plus you can pin separate lists as tabs). It also opens up the feed you last used when you open a new session. Plus, the algorithm for the "For you" feed is open source[0]

0. https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm

exactly. the instagram algorithm is horrendous. until this thread I'd never heard a single person praise it. suspicious? I don't know

for example, a while ago a friend sent me 3 or 4 relationship memes. I didn't like the posts, I may, at most, have reacted to one or two in chat, but since then my suggested posts have been 20-30% relationship memes. no matter how many times I say "I am not interested in content like this" or after blocking about 30 of the most common relationship meme hashtags, I still get the same 20-30% of posts, just now they have no or unusual tags. and then more recently, seemingly appropros of nothing this time - bodybuilding/fitness memes! it's the opposite of freakily good

I’ve stopped using the algorithm on IG. Instead I use the “Following” feed (tap the Instagram logo in the top left on the home pane) which is a reverse chronological feed of only the people I follow.

Yeah. That's better, agreed. I've been muting lots of accounts I want to follow, just to get the feed down to a clean friends only feed. It's better, but I guess my big point is that algorithms suck, at least from a user's perspective (I'm sure 90% junk mixed with 10% content to keep users engaged does wonders for profits)

I just signed up for threads to hopefully help annoy Elon which is very petty and useless of course but I ended up following a bunch of nat geo photographers who are all over threads and really enjoy my feed at the moment. Nothing wrong with admiring beautiful pics of the world. That sounds like instagram and you're not wrong, but the photographers themselves are more present so you can ask questions which feels different enough. Also, now is the time to annoy anyone famous on their because even the big dogs only have a few thousand comments. lol

Do you mind dropping the names?

Yeah, first follow

* natgeo : Then you'll start seeing that account replying to its photgraphers and you can build your own list.

* michaelgeorge

* reuben

* cosmic_background (I don't think he's natgeo but still neat)

* benashtonart (Also not natgeo but fun)

The algorithm on Instagram has never been freaky in how well it targets my interests. It cares not. It just wants me to look at ads. It's always freaky on how well it advertises stuff that would be the most annoying to me based on something I said a few days ago, though. However I haven't been on since April, so maybe they've changed it again.

Unless I don't want to hook my Insta friends to Threads.

Or just don't use it.

LOL at the clown trying to mute accounts, that's like trying to attack waves in the sea.

Yeah, it's not like meta has any other social media platforms to have gathered experience from...

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