I've started to use Instagram again, and I just keep asking myself "how can people even stand being here"? You can't view your general feed in chronological order, ads are on profile feeds now, every 3rd post is an ad... It's way different than it was a decade ago. Not to mention the #sofubi tag is a cesspool of lottery posts and doesn't have much kaiju anymore. Have people just been tolerating these changes because there's nowhere else to go? Or is there something I'm missing?
You are not wrong @hellointerloper. I can't stand it but there's two reasons why I can't quit you Instagram. 1. It's the only place I hear about releases from certain artists 2. It's the only place I communicate with certain people. Everything else about it is awful and I hate the fact that it's such a huge time suck in my life. BUT, the desktop experience doesn't have the same issue with ads and my feed tends to be in more of a chronological order.
I use it on Android and as far as I can tell, when I use the Following and Favorites views, all of the posts are being displayed in reverse chronological order. Does it work the same on iOS?
Yep, my trick on Android is to favorite everyone I follow and the look at my favorites until I catch up for the day. If I miss a few days of posts i just have to let them fade into the insta-ether.
I double checked and when I scroll through the Favorites or Following views I get no ads in there. This could be due to the pi-hole adblocker in my home network. I still get ads when going through Stories, though. It seems like I get an average of one story ad after every batch of active stories from people I follow. That's pretty annoying now that I'm more aware of it. I know quite a few folks on Instagram who only view stories, they never bother scrolling through posts.
My mind is blown, I didn’t even know those options existed. IG has just become much more palatable. Thanks!
Those options made a world of difference for me, I was so close to ditching IG. SMDH about how low-key they kept it when they rolled them out, that ppl are still only now finding out about them.
How it is on Android: See the Instagram logo in the upper left? There should be an arrow pointing down to the right of the logo. Tap on the logo and you should get two options: Following and Favorites. If you haven't favorited anyone yet, that feed may be empty.
That’s strange, I have iOS and the app doesn’t have the arrow. If I visit Instagram in Safari, it has the arrow with the favorites/following options! Guess I’m sticking to the browser version!
The arrow might not show until you click on the Instagram logo in the upper left. Should still get the options for Favorites and Follows
The logo just turns grey when I press it and nothing happens… my phone is probably just too old. Turning 5 this July.
I downloaded Instagram Threads, so far it's like the other Twitter clones I've checked out, with the notable difference that there are actually other people using it.
https://mashable.com/article/threads-meta-twitter-delete-account-instagram "You may deactivate your Threads profile at any time, but your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account," Threads' supplemental privacy policy reads. Nope. Not me.
Looks like they’re going the Google route, one account to access all services… except with Google you can wipe those services if you want. I can delete my Blogger and YouTube whenever I want and still keep my Google account. Sounds to me like Meta wants to inflate their user count. They don’t want people deleting their accounts after testing it, so they’re putting our IG accounts on the line. Just my thoughts.
If that’s the case, I’m out (again! But for good). I almost hate social media business and culture enough as it is. Just there for a couple Booska toy chances. There’s no escape
I don't see the account deletion thing as a big deal. Any time I've wanted to ditch a social media platform I just stop using it and uninstall the app.
Lol! They made such a big deal about the enormous amount of sign-ups within a matter of hours/days. Turns out, they just auto-enrolled everyone with an IG/FB account!
So if I do evil on Threads I can just claim that I was an involuntary victim of my digital environment? Yay!
