Instagram is one of the most used social media platforms today. It has billions of users sharing pictures, videos, and reels about their day-to-day life. Now, whether you are a crazy Instagramer or someone who opens the app once or twice a week and has noticed a few changes in the app, you're not alone.
Meta – the owner of Instagram, made some unexpected changes. This was done due to the competition with its rival Chinese app TikTok to keep it interactive, relevant, and up-to-date. However, this has upset most users, influencers, and celebrities. And more than that, it bothered some extremely famous influencers that hold the fate of all social media. This is one of the reasons behind the massive backlash the app and its owner's received.
How it all Started:
Recently, the app started making changes to its user interface, recommendations, and feeds. Many users felt they were trying to transform Instagram into another TikTok Application. The truth is, TikTok is one of the biggest competitors, which is why they tried to merge some features with the intention that the users will enjoy the advanced features. However, the unnecessary full-screen interface and the unwanted recommendations were a major setback that disappointed many users, including the most influential celebrities on Instagram - The Kardashians.
The second most followed Instagram personality, Kylie Jenner, shared a post of another user on July 25th, 2022. The post says, "Make Instagram, Instagram Again. "(Stop trying to be TikTok; I want to see cute photos of my friends). Sincerely, everyone." This post that Kylie shared was something that many Instagram users resonated with.
The plea she posted to her story was linked with a change.org petition that has now been signed by more than 292,200 people today. Her sister Kim Kardashian shared the same post with more than a million likes, as many people felt the same way.
This was a major downfall for Instagram, and many changes that Instagram had refused to reverse are now undergoing some changes to ensure that users can see as many posts from their friends as possible.
In response, Adam Mosseri – the head of Instagram, shared a video tweet, stating that there are recommendations and users can snooze them and cancel them out. He provided reasoning for the recommendations, saying it helps users explore things they didn't know existed. In addition, it helps small influencers grow, and they will continue to do that, but will also try to show the images and posts of their followed accounts on the top of the feed.
Furthermore, he tweeted,
"If you want to make sure to never miss anything from a friend, or any account for that matter, add that account to your Favorites, and we will show their feed posts at the top of Feed."
The Bottom Line:
Thanks to Kylie Jenner, and Kim Kardashian for their posts, Instagram is now considering reversing the unwanted changes. Now, we might stop seeing more and more reflections of TikTok on Instagram daily. This was an achievement for all the 200,000+ signees of the change.org petition.
