Image: © Drobot Dean/Stock.adobe.com
If endless Reels of dogs, cats and people you don’t know populate your Instagram feed, and you don’t want them to, here’s a quick and easy fix.
Instagram is undoubtedly one of the most popular social media apps out there, but recent changes to the feed of the quintessential image-sharing platform of our times have disappointed many.
Changes represent an overarching push towards video. This is seen to be capitalising on the massive popularity of short-form video driven by TikTok, especially among a younger audience.
Instagram’s strategy includes showing users more Reels on their feed – even from accounts they don’t follow – and turning any Instagram video shorter than 15 seconds into a Reel. Reels is the app’s video feature that was launched to take on TikTok.
There were also plans to make a more immersive and full-screen experience on the app, which were rolled back during testing after being criticised by some high-profile users such as Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian.
“I need to be honest. I do believe more and more of Instagram is going to become videos,” CEO Adam Mosseri told his 1.5m followers on Instagram last week.
“If you’re looking at what people share on Instagram – that’s shifting more and more to videos over time. If you’re looking at what people like and consume and view on Instagram, that’s shifting more and more to video over time, even when we stop changing anything.”
‘Not interested’
If you’re one of the many who find Instagram’s deviation from an image-focused platform where you can just see what people you follow are up to, there is a quick fix.
When suggested posts start to get interspersed in your feed intrusively, Instagram has an easy step that can enable you to stop seeing similar posts or ‘snooze’ them for up to 30 days at a time.
Users on iOS and Android can do so by tapping the three dots on the top-right corner of the post and then selecting ‘Not interested’. To hide just one particular suggested post, users can tap the X option above it and it will disappear from the feed.
Once the post is hidden, users are given a few options to tell Instagram how they feel about suggested posts. By tapping the ‘x’ icon inside a circle, users will stop seeing similar posts on their feed, while tapping the clock icon will hide all suggested posts for 30 days.
After 30 days, users can snooze suggested posts again, meaning that it is possible to use Instagram for just seeing pictures and videos shared by your friends and other accounts you follow.
Meta saw a more than 30pc increase last quarter in the time that people spent engaging with Reels across Facebook and Instagram, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the company’s most recent earnings call.
But not everyone is on board with the push for video. Last week, Jenner, Kardashian and many others shared a post referencing a petition to ‘Make Instagram Instagram Again’. “Stop trying to be TikTok, I just want to see cute pictures of my friends. Sincerely, everyone,” the post read.
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