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I think the single best change Instagram done in a decade is the "ad break" that happens once you've scrolled through enough posts, which stops you for N seconds to stare at some random ad. I think I can scroll through 2-3 posts before my scrolling gets locked, and I close the app, and now I barely scroll Instagram at all anymore. Thank you Instagram!

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That's me with old.reddit .com, best change they ever made was starting to block that. I haven't been on reddit in over a month and have, this may or may not be related, felt a lot less depressed and stressed

old reddit isn't really blocked, you just have to be logged in

I'll not login on the couch tablet so no more reddit for me on it.

If you're worried about addictive scrolling perhaps your "couch tablet" is worth side-eyeing.

I've yet to find a more suitable use for a tablet. Maybe the whole device class is cooked.

They're not bad for note-taking in STEM courses.

For math classes where the instructor requires you to upload the work I use OneNote on my desktop (copy in the homework problem) and tablet (do the work).

The couch tablet just had old.reddit.com/r/all On my desktop I have thousands of bots on my ignore list as well as hundreds of subs. The tablet gave me the true unfiltered garbage that I hardly see elsewhere.

Conveniently, Reddit has auto-banned the last three accounts I tried opening with them [1], which really enhances the impact of the old.reddit changes for me personally.

[1] I have no idea why this is the case, AFAICT it's just anti-bot autoimmune disorder deciding it doesn't like some signal or other.

Old reddit is still around but reddit's leadership made statements lately suggesting we should expect old reddit to start sunsetting. For me, old reddit constantly flips to the crappy new reddit and within the 10-20 minutes/2-3 days I spend looking at it I have to manually revert my preference back to see old reddit maybe twice a week - despite old reddit already being set as the preference. To me, that signals they want users on new reddit, which I dislike, so I'd actually just leave the site entirely without old reddit. It's already gone severely down hill in the last 5 or so years to the point I barely use it.

New Reddit is literally unusable for me. And I mean actually literal.

Anytime an image is opened in new Reddit I have a 50% chance of not being able to back out of the page without it immediately redirecting back to the image and then locking the whole tab. I’m not even able to enter a different site into the url bar, I have to kill the tab and open a new one.

Even logged in old.reddit is worse than logged out as it recalculates the post order after hitting back from a post instead of just giving me the same fucking page I was on.

I don’t know what Reddit plan is, or their business model going forward if users can’t actually use it.

Although I did notice today they’ve added games so I guess they might be going for ad revenue on that like news sites have done in recent years.

The problem is that they measure this, and if it's true for many they will just change it until they find the right way to keep you there. It's a giant machine dedicated to turn users into addicts. Regulation (sad) and most of all education is the only things that I believe can help here.

Tax them -> spend in education.... not that I think it will happen though! :)

When did that start for you? I've never seen that myself, I can keep scrolling as long as I want

Hmm, I think sometime in spring maybe. My wife tells me the same thing, she doesn't see those breaks. Not sure, I've had my Instagram account since 2010 I think, maybe like a reverse-grandfathering or just long-running A/B test?

I opened Instagram and scrolled now just to reproduce it again, and I saw one "normal" post before this "ad break" appeared for me: https://i.imgur.com/SS6kuKV.png

Those ad breaks only appear if you opt out of personalized tracking.

They're a punishment for you because you won't let them collect data.

FB app does that too.

Well, in my case it seems like a win-win, less of a punishment and more of an extra feature I gained for making the right choice I guess. It's all the eyes of the beholder!

Yeah, same here, but that's the reason why others aren't seeing it :)

Content not viewable in my region :P

Ay, I'm glad we now have country-specific internets, very fun :)

I uploaded the image to https://i.postimg.cc/Cx6fYh8p/image.png instead, hopefully you're not on corporate network blocking the (used to be) shady .cc tld.

To add further humor on top of this, I think i.postimg.cc TLS certificate just now/yesterday expired??? Not sure if it's just me, but the certificate says it expired "Thu, 10 Sep 2026 20:49:55 GMT" although I did manage to upload the image, maybe different host...

Nope, cert expired so I'm not allowed to view it XD It's alright, other comments say that it's because of protecting your privacy, which I guess I haven't done

You get that when you refuse personalised ads.

https://one-sec.app

Plugging the thing that finally got me off IG. Now if I need to see something I use the browser and it’s so terrible that I get pissed trying to scroll after I saw what I opened the page for.

I don't really see people using Instagram anymore, it seems like it's mostly turned into a static photo album. For example, I've seen people use Instagram links on dating profiles. For more, see IG @...

> I don't really see people using Instagram anymore

> I've seen people use Instagram links on dating profiles

Does that not count as using Instagram or?

Same! It's a great reminder to stop scrolling and close the app.

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