Unskippable ads might come to an Instagram app near you

I'm all for it, but not for the same reasons as Meta.

The success of apps like TikTok and Instagram lay in the endless scrolling feeds. Any kind of forced interruption is going to snap people out of that trance and provide the needed interruption to close the app and get back to whatever they were doing. I see that as an untended positive consequence.

A lot of success in the app's experience can be tied back to the user being able to control it rapidly - the app's main interface is driven by gestures, swipe for a skip, double tap for a heart, flicking to navigate and so on. A forced break where inputs are ignored will feel like a car that has lost its steering.

Another compounding factor is that the content in these apps is rarely quality. The only way I see people accepting this change is in exchange for premium content. Otherwise it'll just be perceived as yet another degradation in the platform, and a very good reason to move on.

All commercial social apps will invariably devolve into utter garbage.

By all means. It will be the day many people simply erase this garbage app from their phones. I used to use IG to promote my photography, now I barely use it simply because the mental defectives inside Meta decided that by no means should I be shown even my own friends posts or they mine unless we fork money over. There goes the personal hobby promotion. Now they're going to "make me" watch their paid algorithmic garbage too? Enshittification is real, but you'd think some of these brainless clowns would actually be able to pull their heads out of their asses long enough to see that it might be a good idea to give it some limits against at least some usability.