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1. Bold move in this day and age: prioritizing quality of UX over business metrics. Props to whoever at Instagram product made the call on this. That said, if

1. Bold move in this day and age: prioritizing quality of UX over business metrics. Props to whoever at Instagram product made the call on this. That said, if Instagram is serious about not being evil, the only option is ultimately to secede from Facebook. As long as they are part of F Corp, all of these tactics designed to recapture the Big Tech moral high ground are doomed to fail. The only way I could see this happening is if there were mass protests of Instagram employees demanding to be made independent. Kind of like the Google employee protests but potentially aided by some well-timed regulatory pressure. Not holding my breath on that, but it's a least a theoretical possibility, right? 2. "Leaking" a design prototype to Constine at TechCrunch is a very clever way to beta test a massive product decision like this. They know that hiding Likes will cost them engagement, which means revenue, but if they get enough good press about it, it might get the masses to start trusting facebook more, which would allow them to explain away the lower revenue numbers and avoid a potential investor revolt. By leaking the feature before it's even released, they can gauge the reaction of the market. It's quite a clever scheme, really. Anyway, barring some kind of miracle secession play, I'm sad to say that Instagram making these kinds of product decisions is like rearranging deck chairs on the ethical Titanic. But I'll give them an A for effort.

wongmjane 7y ago
It's me who reverse engineer the Instagram app, demo the unreleased features, and then tweet about it, in which is then picked up by Constine as per usual: https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1118970853654290432 https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1118970853654290432 No employees told me anything about it before and after the tweet Though it's unsure if Instagram purposely planted this to get me tweet about it (because that description sounds like a prepared statement) ;)
- filleokus 7y ago
  Do you have any write ups on how you find unreleased features like this? Are you looking at the binary or the network traffic? Cool findings anyways!
- ai_ia 7y ago
  Yeah. I follow you on twitter. Can you write a blog post about your workflow? That would be an interesting read.
- danesparza 7y ago
  "Though it's unsure if Instagram purposely planted this to get me tweet about it" I suppose it's game-over if Instagram is that good at inception. :-)
  - dibujaron 7y ago
    Ooh, I don't know. If they regularly see people dig through their code and then tweet about what they find, planting things in the code sounds like a great way to "soft announce" features to gauge reaction. That way if they decide not to go forward, they don't lose face, it was just some unannounced feature that they were considering.
    - r00fus 7y ago
      It’s not like this sort of thing hasn’t been done in the Apple rumors ecosystem for a long time...
  - geuszb 7y ago
    Big companies know that every one of their binaries gets torn apart by people eager for a scoop and have exploited this in the past. See for example https://www.androidpolice.com/2014/08/06/google-just-rickrolled-me-via-an-apk-teardown-and-im-not-even-mad/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2014/08/06/google-just-rickrol... (though this one was for a laugh)
  - reshie 7y ago
    happens more than you may think. as for instagram doing it here i don't know either.
- hart_russell 7y ago
  Nice job Jane!
- mindgam3 7y ago
  Interesting! I have no reason to doubt your intentions or that you are working independently. That said, if you have a history of finding these and getting picked up by news, it's certainly possible that Facebook could be using your reverse engineering skills as a way to leak things. I know how cynical that sounds, but I've seen too much from disinformation from Facebook execs to take anything from them remotely at face value, no pun intended. Anyway, there's no way to prove it, just speculation based on a feeling I had.
  - wongmjane 7y ago
    I actually ignore unreleased features about ads because it's not something I personally find exciting
    - mindgam3 7y ago
      I can't argue with that. Plus it might make people question your "Not Facebook Employee" twitter tagline. Speaking of which, I saw a tweet that you're interviewing at Facebook this week. Is that true? Not that I would ever begrudge someone from trying to make it big in tech, but dang, I would hope someone with your skills would find an opportunity working for the resistance rather than the occupiers :-)
      - wongmjane 7y ago
        I included "Not Facebook Employee" because too many people told me to not roll out this and that feature, ask me to give them verified badges and tech support Yes, I am interviewing with Facebook. It's true. It'd be my first time actually stepping into the tech industry
sfifs 7y ago
More possibly a move to dip into the revenue stream of "influencer marketing". There are a plethora of companies with "influencer marketing platforms" that scrape Instagram likes and followers of influencers and intermediate between advertisers and them. This basically seems to deny "non-official" platforms data
- cinquemb 7y ago
  I can see this being a motivation as well, not unlike how over time FB and twitter closed off parts of their api so they could monetize it for themselves. Though I think this will create new opportunities for NLP services to expand to cover the ground like scraping companies will no longer be able to cover.
Ntrails 7y ago
Isn't this just instagram testing a UI response to potential legislation change?
cocochanel 7y ago
Very bold indeed, I am curious as to how this will affect the so-called "influencers."
DCKing 7y ago
> That said, if Instagram is serious about not being evil, the only option is ultimately to secede from Facebook. As long as they are part of F Corp, all of these tactics designed to recapture the Big Tech moral high ground are doomed to fail. Of all tech giants, Facebook is incredibly easy to break up because they have multiple major products with seperate branding that could easily compete with each other. I'm still rooting for that possibility, because Instagram is not going to leave on their own.
throwaway84_TO 7y ago
I know this is a highly unpopular opinion (and hence the throwaway), but I really don't understand this idea of wanting to "break up" Facebook and the underlying motivation behind these types of statements. What exactly is it about the platform that makes it so "evil"? Do we just think Zuckerberg is innately corrupt and trying to slip some sort of mastermind plan of internet domination without us noticing? I understand and similarly dislike the idea that Facebook is aggregating statistics about its users and selling them to advertisers, but at the same time, do we honestly believe that the vast majority of people would rather subscribe to "get rid of ads and access to data"? I don't use Facebook myself (despite having an account), but from my perspective, it just seems that society as a whole has simply decided to scapegoat Facebook and its "ecosystem". We seem to be trying to blame the company for the unwanted secondary effects of the rise of the internet and all the inter-connectivity that has come as a result. A good example in my mind is WhatsApp. Facebook went ahead and had the whole messaging system E2EE, much to the applause of everybody. From this point on, even among security experts, WhatsApp was well regarded as a messaging platform - essentially only second to Signal. However, a little while ago, following the Brazilian elections, there was a massive uproar that "fake news" was being spread through WhatsApp and that Facebook hadn't done enough to intervene and stop this. Really? So now we are complaining that Facebook isn't reading and censoring messages accordingly? Do people not remember those annoying e-mail chains back in the day - usually forwarded by some naive friend? Are we really to blame the medium? I feel people will always find ways to use the internet to spread misinformation. Do we really think we can stem "fake news" by expecting Facebook to bear the responsibility for everything that is communicated on their platform(s)? Lastly, are we truly confident that hamstringing Facebook with a "break-up" is really going to lead to a better future? Do I really want my kids to be using TikTok/WeChat/Telegram or some other foreign controlled platform over which my government has much less oversight?
- perfmode 7y ago
  > Oh think of the kids! We really need to start discouraging the use of throwaway accounts for comments like this. One should be willing to stand by their beliefs and navigate the process of push-back with courage and honesty.
latexr 7y ago
> They know that hiding Likes will cost them engagement The article makes the opposite argument: > Many users delete posts that don’t immediately get ‘enough’ Likes or post to their fake ‘Finstagram’ accounts if they don’t think they’ll be proud of the hearts they collect. Hiding Like counts might get users posting more since they’ll be less self-conscious.
- mindgam3 7y ago
  Hm, I don't totally buy that argument. Deleting posts without Likes is a factor, but I think this is significantly outweighed by the number of people who obsessively check the app a hundred times a day to watch their increasing Likes count.
seppin 7y ago
> 1. Bold move in this day and age: prioritizing quality of UX over business metrics. Props to whoever at Instagram product made the call on this. Or it's a cynical move to remove any user input as to what you actually see on your feed.

wongmjane 7y ago

It's me who reverse engineer the Instagram app, demo the unreleased features, and then tweet about it, in which is then picked up by Constine as per usual: https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1118970853654290432 https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1118970853654290432 No employees told me anything about it before and after the tweet Though it's unsure if Instagram purposely planted this to get me tweet about it (because that description sounds like a prepared statement) ;)

filleokus 7y ago
Do you have any write ups on how you find unreleased features like this? Are you looking at the binary or the network traffic? Cool findings anyways!
ai_ia 7y ago
Yeah. I follow you on twitter. Can you write a blog post about your workflow? That would be an interesting read.
danesparza 7y ago
"Though it's unsure if Instagram purposely planted this to get me tweet about it" I suppose it's game-over if Instagram is that good at inception. :-)
- dibujaron 7y ago
  Ooh, I don't know. If they regularly see people dig through their code and then tweet about what they find, planting things in the code sounds like a great way to "soft announce" features to gauge reaction. That way if they decide not to go forward, they don't lose face, it was just some unannounced feature that they were considering.
  - r00fus 7y ago
    It’s not like this sort of thing hasn’t been done in the Apple rumors ecosystem for a long time...
- geuszb 7y ago
  Big companies know that every one of their binaries gets torn apart by people eager for a scoop and have exploited this in the past. See for example https://www.androidpolice.com/2014/08/06/google-just-rickrolled-me-via-an-apk-teardown-and-im-not-even-mad/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2014/08/06/google-just-rickrol... (though this one was for a laugh)
- reshie 7y ago
  happens more than you may think. as for instagram doing it here i don't know either.
hart_russell 7y ago
Nice job Jane!
mindgam3 7y ago
Interesting! I have no reason to doubt your intentions or that you are working independently. That said, if you have a history of finding these and getting picked up by news, it's certainly possible that Facebook could be using your reverse engineering skills as a way to leak things. I know how cynical that sounds, but I've seen too much from disinformation from Facebook execs to take anything from them remotely at face value, no pun intended. Anyway, there's no way to prove it, just speculation based on a feeling I had.
- wongmjane 7y ago
  I actually ignore unreleased features about ads because it's not something I personally find exciting
  - mindgam3 7y ago
    I can't argue with that. Plus it might make people question your "Not Facebook Employee" twitter tagline. Speaking of which, I saw a tweet that you're interviewing at Facebook this week. Is that true? Not that I would ever begrudge someone from trying to make it big in tech, but dang, I would hope someone with your skills would find an opportunity working for the resistance rather than the occupiers :-)
    - wongmjane 7y ago
      I included "Not Facebook Employee" because too many people told me to not roll out this and that feature, ask me to give them verified badges and tech support Yes, I am interviewing with Facebook. It's true. It'd be my first time actually stepping into the tech industry

sfifs 7y ago

More possibly a move to dip into the revenue stream of "influencer marketing". There are a plethora of companies with "influencer marketing platforms" that scrape Instagram likes and followers of influencers and intermediate between advertisers and them. This basically seems to deny "non-official" platforms data

cinquemb 7y ago
I can see this being a motivation as well, not unlike how over time FB and twitter closed off parts of their api so they could monetize it for themselves. Though I think this will create new opportunities for NLP services to expand to cover the ground like scraping companies will no longer be able to cover.

Ntrails 7y ago

Isn't this just instagram testing a UI response to potential legislation change?

cocochanel 7y ago

Very bold indeed, I am curious as to how this will affect the so-called "influencers."

DCKing 7y ago

> That said, if Instagram is serious about not being evil, the only option is ultimately to secede from Facebook. As long as they are part of F Corp, all of these tactics designed to recapture the Big Tech moral high ground are doomed to fail. Of all tech giants, Facebook is incredibly easy to break up because they have multiple major products with seperate branding that could easily compete with each other. I'm still rooting for that possibility, because Instagram is not going to leave on their own.

throwaway84_TO 7y ago

I know this is a highly unpopular opinion (and hence the throwaway), but I really don't understand this idea of wanting to "break up" Facebook and the underlying motivation behind these types of statements. What exactly is it about the platform that makes it so "evil"? Do we just think Zuckerberg is innately corrupt and trying to slip some sort of mastermind plan of internet domination without us noticing? I understand and similarly dislike the idea that Facebook is aggregating statistics about its users and selling them to advertisers, but at the same time, do we honestly believe that the vast majority of people would rather subscribe to "get rid of ads and access to data"? I don't use Facebook myself (despite having an account), but from my perspective, it just seems that society as a whole has simply decided to scapegoat Facebook and its "ecosystem". We seem to be trying to blame the company for the unwanted secondary effects of the rise of the internet and all the inter-connectivity that has come as a result. A good example in my mind is WhatsApp. Facebook went ahead and had the whole messaging system E2EE, much to the applause of everybody. From this point on, even among security experts, WhatsApp was well regarded as a messaging platform - essentially only second to Signal. However, a little while ago, following the Brazilian elections, there was a massive uproar that "fake news" was being spread through WhatsApp and that Facebook hadn't done enough to intervene and stop this. Really? So now we are complaining that Facebook isn't reading and censoring messages accordingly? Do people not remember those annoying e-mail chains back in the day - usually forwarded by some naive friend? Are we really to blame the medium? I feel people will always find ways to use the internet to spread misinformation. Do we really think we can stem "fake news" by expecting Facebook to bear the responsibility for everything that is communicated on their platform(s)? Lastly, are we truly confident that hamstringing Facebook with a "break-up" is really going to lead to a better future? Do I really want my kids to be using TikTok/WeChat/Telegram or some other foreign controlled platform over which my government has much less oversight?

perfmode 7y ago
> Oh think of the kids! We really need to start discouraging the use of throwaway accounts for comments like this. One should be willing to stand by their beliefs and navigate the process of push-back with courage and honesty.

latexr 7y ago

> They know that hiding Likes will cost them engagement The article makes the opposite argument: > Many users delete posts that don’t immediately get ‘enough’ Likes or post to their fake ‘Finstagram’ accounts if they don’t think they’ll be proud of the hearts they collect. Hiding Like counts might get users posting more since they’ll be less self-conscious.

mindgam3 7y ago
Hm, I don't totally buy that argument. Deleting posts without Likes is a factor, but I think this is significantly outweighed by the number of people who obsessively check the app a hundred times a day to watch their increasing Likes count.

seppin 7y ago

> 1. Bold move in this day and age: prioritizing quality of UX over business metrics. Props to whoever at Instagram product made the call on this. Or it's a cynical move to remove any user input as to what you actually see on your feed.