Instagram (2020-Present)

Instagram is a social media that is owned by Facebook. It was launched on October 6, 2010.

Why It Isn't Gramming Anymore

1. The problem with the site is Instagram's actual CEO, Adam Mosseri who makes bad decisions starting in the late 2010s that is destroying the platform despite the large userbase that still holds today. Plus the community can be toxic like other websites
2. Many people get frequent sexually-charged direct messages from annoying spambot accounts, mostly Russian spambot accounts.
3. If users try to make too many accounts, they will be banned from making accounts.
   • While it does avoid abuse, this is not an excuse since they should have update account creation or give warning instead.
4. Instagram now has a pop-up log-in feature that will force you to create an account or sign in, which feels very unnecessary as most other social networking sites like Reddit don't require this. Even worse before, log-in requirement can cross the line with redirecting to the sign up and account creation which is annoying.
5. When users try to follow famous people, spambots follow those users back.
6. Instagram blocks people's accounts for no reason. For example, Red Velvet's Irene was blocked after she made her Instagram account, but it is now unblocked due to her apology.
7. Another thing is that they like cropping the posts without letting some post fully, which can be annoying to users.
8. The Instagram staff seems to not be able to listen to criticism.
9. It made a decision to hide the number of likes on a post, which means that only the person can see the number of likes on their own posts, while others can’t. This on its own is a counter-productive move, especially since that is what social media websites are supposed to be about.
10. At the end of 2020, Instagram made a decision of change of terms of guidelines which many pole-dancers, NSFW artists and others left the site which made various users get negative reception to the change
11. There isn’t even an option to turn off the hidden number, at least on the app. This change was met with poor reviews, and singer, Nicki Minaj even quit due to this.
12. You can only post and use most stickers on mobile.
13. Similar to YouTube, Instagram has a lack of quality control, and it had users who steal art, and the staff does nothing to ban them.
14. Terrible moderation, with instances such as their hesitation to ban NSFW Gacha Life accounts while banning alt-right users like Facebook does.
15. Their stories feature is a blatant rip-off of Snapchat's stories.
16. When you try to close a story on the app, there's a likely chance that the app will crash while doing so.
17. In 2021, the band Keiino got hacked and the hacker posted several images of herself.
18. In September 2022, they deleted the recent tab, and again in June 2023, which is a pure form of censorship that does not make sense since recent posts are liked by the community. Thankfully, in Imgsed instance, there is the feature that can be viewable
19. Back in early 2024 before the complete censorship on tags, hashtags seems thaat they violate the guidelines as you cannot see posts, but alternative instances like Pixwox,Imginn, Picuki works well and can be seen
20. As of october 2024, the actual CEO made a drastic change to hashtags, as you can no longer go to the tags, instead you're redirected to the log in page. This shows that Adam Mosseri is a leftist, but also is a Huge censorship for the platform much like Youtube does

Redeeming Qualities

1. It used to be decent and good back before Instagram made bad decisions.
2. It is much easier to use and has many more features than it used to. For instance, users can now post from a computer, as opposed to a phone, post pictures that aren't square shaped, post videos, and post galleries, all of those things that were originally impossible in the past.
3. There's some funny videos that originate from there, too.
4. You can set your account to private if you don't want people seeing your posts publicly.

Trivia

• Instagram along with Facebook is banned in Russia after a Moscow court trial labeling Meta as "extremist" after Meta relaxed their policy on hate speech against Russian soldiers and the government.

References

1. https://twitter.com/finallevel/status/1237073355850813442?lang=en
2. https://www.the-sun.com/lifestyle/tech-old/2473539/how-to-stop-spam-instagram-messages/
3. https://hype.my/2019/172941/the-reason-why-instagram-removed-red-velvets-irenes-account/
4. https://mashable.com/article/instagram-requires-log-in-to-view-profiles
5. https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/02/instagram-stories/
6. https://keiino-news.net/keiino-was-hacked/?fbclid=IwAR0DfC4W4kPKTurk5oa6DzD-vBrQJyfMcwHwGEvT0xQlzYEO7MMA_8wWOa4
7. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/21/russia-bans-facebook-and-instagram-under-extremism-law