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I was invested heavily in Instagram as my active social media fix for two years. This was spurred by a comment on HN and similar to what is mentioned here - it

I was invested heavily in Instagram as my active social media fix for two years. This was spurred by a comment on HN and similar to what is mentioned here - it was deemed to be a fun, positive and happy virtual party. And it was. For a while. Soon enough, the advertisements and the activism took over. People only posted in Stories, and the inevitable race-to-the-bottom to have the highest followers/likes took over. A friend, who ran fitness gigs on the side, told me how a top branded sports marketer were willing to sponsor his shoes for a certain number of follows and likes on his post, with their brand mentions. Somehow all these appears to be a perverted, caricature of an idealistic life. I got sick of it and i haven’t used it since the beginning of this year. I understand that as I grow older, part of this is feeded by cynicism of having seen similar patterns in the past, starting with IRC chat rooms to whatever is the trend this year. But, the in-your-face commercialisation and incentives for users to keep generating content forever all appears very dystopian to me.

iamkroot 6y ago
I only use a third party app to browse Instagram, which both blocks advertisements and stories. I keep the main app on my phone and only use it to create posts of my own. Whenever I open it I'm amazed at the sheer quantity of nonsense that's hurled at the user. I have no idea how people can put up with it.
- Ruthalas 6y ago
  What third party app do you use, if you don't mind sharing?
  - iamkroot 6y ago
    Friendly for Instagram: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.friendly.instagram https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.friendly.in...
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    I can’t say for sure what OP meant; I know there are Instagram+ type apps on iOS and Android. There’s also this: https://github.com/cloudrac3r/bibliogram https://github.com/cloudrac3r/bibliogram
dageshi 6y ago
I think it's the nature of all platforms that scale too big. I recall saying twitter was a fairly pleasant place before it got too big.
- nogabebop23 6y ago
  This type of comment feels a lot like "I knew of the band before they made it big". I'm not disagreeing with your perception as I think it applies to the entire internet as a whole. It's exclusionary and selfish and unfair but I still think the internet was better before all these people replaced cable TV with internet consumption devices...
mrisoli 6y ago
I was also invested heavily and still am a little bit even if my usage is decreasing. Wow I loved instagram, first the filters that made people try to be artsy managing to distract people from the fact that early phone cameras had terrible quality. Then there were stories, while unfortunately ripped off Snapchat, they did a great job with it and it fit right in with the image first social network. People started posting stuff simpler than the perfect life of their feed. When people started complaining about tons of ads, I didn't have them, I quickly discovered I was in some AB test, eventually they probably saw how ads were perfoming well now we all have them, holy shit its a lot of ads. Now its a cesspool of ads, marketing, activism, they moved the notifications tab out of the navigation bar to have space for a shopping tab, people are marketing their hustles, trying to build up personal brands, its so used that businesses almost require an instagram presence, signal to noise ratio is getting worse by the hour. I still use it quite a bit because it helps me keep up with lots of people from back home and other places I've lived but as it floods with ads people share less and less personal stuff to, feels like a post-social media age is going to come eventually.

iamkroot 6y ago

I only use a third party app to browse Instagram, which both blocks advertisements and stories. I keep the main app on my phone and only use it to create posts of my own. Whenever I open it I'm amazed at the sheer quantity of nonsense that's hurled at the user. I have no idea how people can put up with it.

Ruthalas 6y ago
What third party app do you use, if you don't mind sharing?
- iamkroot 6y ago
  Friendly for Instagram: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.friendly.instagram https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.friendly.in...
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  I can’t say for sure what OP meant; I know there are Instagram+ type apps on iOS and Android. There’s also this: https://github.com/cloudrac3r/bibliogram https://github.com/cloudrac3r/bibliogram

dageshi 6y ago

I think it's the nature of all platforms that scale too big. I recall saying twitter was a fairly pleasant place before it got too big.

nogabebop23 6y ago
This type of comment feels a lot like "I knew of the band before they made it big". I'm not disagreeing with your perception as I think it applies to the entire internet as a whole. It's exclusionary and selfish and unfair but I still think the internet was better before all these people replaced cable TV with internet consumption devices...

mrisoli 6y ago

I was also invested heavily and still am a little bit even if my usage is decreasing. Wow I loved instagram, first the filters that made people try to be artsy managing to distract people from the fact that early phone cameras had terrible quality. Then there were stories, while unfortunately ripped off Snapchat, they did a great job with it and it fit right in with the image first social network. People started posting stuff simpler than the perfect life of their feed. When people started complaining about tons of ads, I didn't have them, I quickly discovered I was in some AB test, eventually they probably saw how ads were perfoming well now we all have them, holy shit its a lot of ads. Now its a cesspool of ads, marketing, activism, they moved the notifications tab out of the navigation bar to have space for a shopping tab, people are marketing their hustles, trying to build up personal brands, its so used that businesses almost require an instagram presence, signal to noise ratio is getting worse by the hour. I still use it quite a bit because it helps me keep up with lots of people from back home and other places I've lived but as it floods with ads people share less and less personal stuff to, feels like a post-social media age is going to come eventually.