Instagram backflips on changes to app: What it means for users

Changes to make Instagram more like TikTok have caused a ‘revolt’ among users. Here’s what it now means for you.

INSTAGRAM will wind back the most controversial changes to its app after a week of intense criticism from users, including a petition to “make Instagram Instagram again” and calls from powerful influencers within the Kardashian clan.

Head of Meta’s popular photo-sharing app, Adam Mosseri, revealed Instagram’s backflip in an interview on Friday, just days after earlier defending the changes.

Mr Mosseri said Instagram would “phase out” a full-screen redesign of the app being tested by some users and would also show users fewer “suggested” posts from accounts they did not follow after widespread complaints users could no longer see content from their friends.

“I’m glad we took a risk — if we’re not failing once in a while, we’re not thinking big enough or bold enough,” Mr Mosseri told Platformer. “But we definitely need to take a step back and regroup.”

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri has backed down from controversial changes made to the app. Picture: Drew Angerer/Getty Images/AFP

The temporary backdown comes after Mr Mosseri’s video defence of the changes went viral on Instagram and Twitter as he told users he’d “been hearing a lot of concerns from all of you” but would not step back from them.

In an earnings call on Thursday, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg also revealed almost one in every six posts shown on Instagram were from accounts users did not follow, and that figure could rise to one in three by the end of 2023.

Instgram’s moves led to widespread criticism, including calls for change from two of its most influential users, Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, who expressed concerns to their combined audience of more than 626 million users.

Social media experts says Meta’s desperation to match rival TikTok had become obvious but the changes were coming at the expense of engagement from its one billion-strong audience who were actively looking for alternatives.

Influencers and photographers are calling on Instagram to make changes to its operation. Picture: AFP

And a petition against changes on the platform has garnered plenty of support, with more than 100,000 people signing a Change.org plea to reverse them within three days of its publication. It attracted more than 220,000 signatures within a week.

Instagram’s recent changes include multiple “suggested posts” from accounts users don’t follow, a much greater focus on Reels, or videos posted to the app in a bid to rival TikTok, and a multitude of sponsored posts and ads.

Photographer Tati Bruening captured the mood of Instagram users when she created a Change.org petition and asked Meta to “make Instagram Instagram again (stop trying to be TikTok, I just want to see cute photos of my friends)”.

The call-out caught the attention of Kardashian and Jenner, who reposted the request with an added “please”, quickly attracting thousands more signatories.

Bruening said the issue was something about which “everyone can agree with” and called on the company to bring back chronological timelines, prioritise photos, and “listen to creators”.

“I know I’m not the only one who scrolls endlessly on their feed and sees that nearly everyone is a stranger,” she said. “What happened to finding cute photos of my friends?”

The outcry follows a study of 81 million Instagram posts by digital marketing firm Later, which found user engagement on the platform has plummeted 44 per cent since 2019.

Instagram users were liking and commenting on photos, image carousels and videos posted to accounts less (down from 5.16 per cent to 2.88 per cent) in 2021, the survey found, while Instagram showed users more Reels.

TikTok is challenging Instagram for daily active users. Picture: DENIS CHARLET / AFP

The photo-sharing app is also falling down app rankings, with Data.ai listing Instagram in sixth spot and trending down, while rival TikTok ranked third.

Social media strategist Meg Coffey said she hadn’t seen a revolt of this scale on Instagram to date and Meta would be risking a lot if they failed to respond to it.

Coffey said many of Instagram’s changes, including a greater focus on Reels and suggested posts, were obviously designed to steal traffic from TikTok and its growing audience predicted to reach 1.8 billion users by the end of 2022.

“It screams that someone has hit an internal panic button: Meta is scrambling and throwing all these things at the wall to see what will stick while forgetting what people come to their platform for,” she said.

“We’ve always known Facebook copies (rivals) — it’s what they do — and it worked for them with Stories which they took from Snapchat so maybe they thought it would work again. But if we wanted TikTok, we could go to TikTok. Instagram was always for photos.”

Coffey said some Instagram users were “on the precipice of switching off,” small business owners and creators who have built a following on Instagram were worrying what to do next, and others were looking for an alternative that doesn’t yet exist.

“But now that the Kardashian are involved, it could be a different ball game,” she said. “When she tweeted about Snapchat, the company lost one billion dollars. When you get the world’s biggest creators going, ‘what are you doing?’ the company has to listen.”

HOW TO FIX YOUR INSTAGRAM EXPERIENCE

Visit your ‘following’ feed: If you want to see posts from accounts you follow — and only posts from account you follow — you can tap the Instagram logo and select ‘following’. It shows posts in chronological order, just like the old days.

Turn off ‘suggested posts’: Instagram has been serving users a heavy diet of content from people that users don’t follow in recent weeks. This move is to encourage them to follow more accounts but it’s also making posts from friends harder to find. You can suspend these suggestions by clicking the three dots beside a ‘suggested post’ and pausing them for 30 days.

Create a ‘favourites’ feed: You can add any people or accounts to a list of Instagram favourites to see their posts more often. You can also select their content by tapping the Instagram logo in the app’s top left corner.

Set up a ‘close friends’ list: From Instagram’s main menu, there’s an option to create a list of close friends with which to share your content so they don’t miss it.

Visit Instagram on the web: In a strange hack, if you visit Instagram.com, rather than its app, you’ll see a scrolling feed of photos without suggested posts or advertisements.

Originally published as Instagram backflips on changes to app: What it means for users