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Comment by hgoel | Hacker News Reader

I don't get how instagram is as popular as it is. I made an account last week to try to look for pictures from an event I recently attended.

First I was incredibly surprised and frustrated that their search functionality is effectively nonexistent, then, when I gave up and scrolled, if I tapped on a post to look closer, I had to deal with it interrupting whatever I was listening to.

Then, cherry on top of the shit cake, they suspended my account unless I did some video ID process. Nope, not happening.

Instagram felt like a more invasive and hostile user experience than any social media I've used before.

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Everytime I stumble upon search on ANY meta made platform I'm dazzled by how anyone can make simple search such a shit feature. Messanger search is ridiculously not working for ten years now.

I think Instagram has gotten quite a bit worse over the past few years. I really only want to see posts from people I follow and they've made that more difficult.

The service that totally baffles me is Tik Tok. I know it's supposed to learn what you like, but it has never really surfaced anything of interest to me. It might even be worse than YouTube for me.

My ideal Instagram algorithm would be to show me only the people I follow, in chronological order. Then show me a marker that I'm at the end of my feed and at that point they can offer me their feed.

> My ideal Instagram algorithm would be to show me only the people I follow, in chronological order. Then show me a marker that I'm at the end of my feed and at that point they can offer me their feed.

I am working on a new social media. I am curious about this point. How would you discover new people to follow initially?

And, is a separate explore page of people you don't follow okay?

The people I follow are mostly people I actually know along with a couple of musicians whose work I'm interested in.

Discovery isn't something that I've ever really thought about because it's not a problem I have. The initial person I followed was a relative. By the end of the first year I probably was only following four or five people. Today (15 years later) I think the number is less than twenty.

A separate explore page is fine. I'd probably open it once to see what it was and then close it. Those types of things are generally made to serve the interests of the service and not the user.

I think social media is generally a terrible idea. I am a fan though of a social network.

You're late to it and that's not how people are using Instagram

> I don't get how instagram is as popular as it is.

Stockholm syndrome.

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