Instagram 12+

Recently, Instagram has decided to copy half of tik tok’s features - this includes their ‘reels’, which are just incredibly annoying and out of sync with the rest of the app. I preferred instagram’s old saving method where you could hold down the save option icon and add a video to multiple save section folders, OVER the new way of saving, which is to press the three dots at the top of the video and select save and THEN add to a collection, meaning you can only add the video to one collection, unless you want to spend the time going all the way to the other collections you wanted the post in and going into its settings and adding the post manually. Tik tok actually has (imo) a worse saving system anyways, so Instagram copying it is a very strange and annoying move. Also, Instagram is forcing every video posted to be a reel, unless of-course it’s a multiple media post - which in turn people often feel forced to post, instead of a one picture/video post, as to avoid the post being a reel. This can be annoying in itself as Instagram doesn’t show the amount of views on a multi image/video post, only the amount of likes. Instagram, please stop trying to copy tik tok and listen to what your users actually want. It’s not reels.

I always enjoyed using Instagram, for me it was a good platform to express my creativity until Instagram became bias and stopped giving everyone the same user experience. On my account, both personal and business I’m not able to edit my reels anymore, rearrange clips. I had this option for maybe a month and then it miraculously disappeared. I got excited thinking that’s a new feature I was always missing until I found out that some users / accounts were able to do that all along. It’s not giving every user equal opportunities so to speak. I don’t mind it becoming more of a video platform but the problem is that I can’t even edit my clips. I feel very limited and I think it’s just discrimination. Perhaps based on how many followers you have and etc. Why some users are able to have additional options and others don’t? It’s not a bug, or a phone and etc. I’ve updated my app, installed and uninstalled it, nothing’s changed. It all started with this whole ‘likes’ experiment. Some accounts were able to see likes some not and etc. Now they’re experimenting on people with reels. It’s beyond disappointing. If you want people to keep using it, more engagement then give everyone same tools. Otherwise everyone will move on to different apps and Instagram will be left with a limited amount of users and demographics.

Artists, musicians, tattooers most folks from creative industries are currently having their careers ruined by this platform. Constantly having to second guess how it’s going to change the way it forces you to behave on the app to suit its own agenda. Meta doesn’t understand the ins and outs of each niche and they force you to take steps that will only weaken your individuality on the platform. It’s been made unrecognisable since meta took over and frustratingly it’s the only way that allot of people find new artists etc so we’re all stuck with it. We don’t have access to our followers which means our interaction is way down which we get chastised for. It feels like the platform is used to generate anxiety over the individuals output which forces you to spend time on the platform instead of creating which should be everyone’s goal. Its riddled with irrelevant ads and is buggy as hell. I’d throw it in the bin if I didn’t need it to keep the small trickle of customers coming through to keep my business running. And that’s about that. Wish they’d just roll out the inevitable paid model and allow us to access our followers again instead of dancing around it. Also the ad tools are broken and aren’t refined enough to actually reach people that are relevant to you so all the time it spends trying to force you to use them is a waste. We don’t need more followers we need access to the ones we already have.