Last week, Instagram, which since 2012 is owned by Facebook, updated the feed to all the account applying the new optimized algorithm. What does it mean? It means that, like on Facebook, priority will be given to those posts that have more likes and the accounts the users interacts more frequently with. Basically it relies on the principle that popular means interesting to everybody, which is like saying “everybody must want to be friends with the most popular girl in school”. Mmhh yeah, I don’t know why that brings to my mind something called “The Plastics”…
According to Facebook algorithms we should all be following them.
Personally, I find very frustrating that Facebook takes upon itself to filter my feed for me, implying that I cannot be trusted handle this aspect of my own social relations myself. As a marketer, I feel always between the carrot and the stick, or better as Pinocchio and the two thieves: things are always very friendly at the beginning but then as a brand I’m forced to pay out more and more to get less and less visibility.
I really have a pet peeve for the fact that every time I open my Facebook page I have to change the stories from “top” to “most recent” so I can get a good idea of what’s going on among my friends and interests. If I don’t do that my feed would be featuring only recipes or other cleverly produced viral videos and of course cute cats&dogs. The best that might come up are some stories from my friends that their other friends, most of whom I never met in my life, like or that I’ve already seen but continue to get likes. In all the years that these two feed modes have been introduced, we were never given the opportunity to choose how to filter our news and stick with it as a setting for our accounts. No every login, we have to change it again and again. I feel like a poor cow that would love to graze grass freely in the fields, carefully choosing the juiciest blades, but instead she’s corralled in one of those overcrowded intensive farming factories: fed fodder of such poor quality that can give her neural diseases and kept happy and fat with synthetics drugs injections. Facebook itself has admitted that they have been able to manipulate users moods through their feed, am I the only one who is terrified by this idea?
An now it is happening on Instagram, too. Instagram was my favorite social network to look for unusual perspectives on life, the world around, I scrolled its feed to see friends and strangers capturing and sharing their special moments in one image, working creatively on them to create meanings, but now it is becoming like an endless commercial dominated by fashionistas and slick professional Instagram photographers, all following the same trends being the fish mouth the camera on camera shot, the leaning on the wall cropped shot etc… In other words: if you don’t adapt to mainstream aesthetics you’re doomed to obscurity and anonymity. What happened to inventiveness, originality, experimentation, discovery? Not included in the algorithm apparently.
And I just wish that popularity meant at least good quality images, but unfortunately that’s not often the case. At the beginning of 2015, Instagram introduced the “explore” function hailed as “feature designed to make finding interesting photos from all over the world—by location, tag, photographer, or subject matter—a whole lot easier” (Fastcompany, emphasis added by me) or as Instagram puts it “Posts are selected automatically based on things like the people you follow or the posts you like. You may also see Featured video channels, which are curated to include things we think the Instagram community will enjoy.” (emphasis added by me). Oh! So that’s why for days, any day, I have been haunted by the #TacoTuesdayChallenge, like all I do is eating at Taco Bell and liking juvenile videos? Here is some examples what we get when we open the Explore page (no Taco Challenge today, phew!):
Now humor me with a little exercise: let’s write down the first (printable) words that come to mind looking at these popular images: silly, erotic, stereotyped, slick, appetizing (to some), very little space for rough and uncut life here, it’s just our happy, sexy, yummy world! Yay!!
Now we are supposed to use this to find other users that share our interests, but all the accounts that are brought up by this search are those that have xx thousands followers and follow max 500, so yes sure here I just want to be another tack in the tally of that smart Instagram manipulator so he can pile up all the love of thousands little hearts at the bottom of his images. The only way to find decently interesting accounts and photos seems to go by tags and then choose “most recent“. These filters allow me to explore the genuine world of Instagram made of quirky portraits and lyrically imperfect moments, just a few moments after they happened. Sure, you’ll have to deal with some really explicit porn here and there, but hey that’s part of real life too!