I am so not "getting" this Instagram thing / do you guys want to look at each others pictures?

Oh, but unlike Ned Raggett, who's only one-half of that statement!

Now it is true I am simple.

You know that's not the half I was referring to.

i think i don’t like instagram

i don’t want my boss checking out pictures of my private life

i don’t need all the smiley pub shots

i like it when people document their walks. i like vintage rock photography. those might be the only types of account i like. mine is terrible. i think i just have less and less interest in spunking content out into the void.

ilx is void-ish, but small enough to feel like i kind of know who i’m talking to. other internet spaces are even smaller.

Well, that's kinda why I like my approach -- one old photo a day plus a few words about it.

yours is good ned.

i dunno i think i find the big traditional social networks less and less.. relevant to me? i like smaller groups.

also i love tiktok. only to lurk though.

i use mine as a catalogue of artwork. otherwise it's a time waster and to keep up with other people's art

^
Pocket art gallery

definitely feeling where you're at, Tracer. the stuff-into-the-void model/habit/approach def doesn't feel the same way it did when I started my flickr in 2005. which already was at a different moment than like "hi folks, welcome to my home on the World Wide Web" in 1998. but i'm not at a point of *not* wanting to share some things, in some ways. the flickr posting/archiving cycle is part of my photographic hobby now, even just for the discipline of getting me to process and organize my photos and write down my thoughts on some things... i find that nice in a lot of ways. sometimes it feels like an infinite irrational burden on myself but i think that's just the highs and lows of it being a hobby, and not specific to the internet/social media.

but as much as i'd love to share my hobby with more people and have it spark more conversations, I feel weird receiving friend requests from whole categories of people i meet...

Agree with Tracer and Dr Casino, esp the "infinite irrational burden" + "discipline of process/organize" re: Flickr. Except I don't even write any sort of commentary any more; tbh back when it was a joint account with my ex, I provided 80% of the visual content but she wrote the "copy" :) Also I'm typically Lightrooming/uploading in bed at 11pm and I don't have the energy to do anything more than the most perfunctory naming/tagging/grouping.

IG uploads are generally from the "proper" cameras too, WiFi'd to the phone, and pushed up at the time. Flickr uploads are mostly just an expanded set of the same thing, just 10+ days behind.

As there's no way (AFAIK) to set access levels on yr IG feed (not so with stories), mine had to be private from the get-go (family snaps, now v rare due to TEENS), so there's automatically a small audience for my mix of diaristic and "artistic"; IG contacts are only interested in the former, and the casual Flickr passer-by only sees the latter.

The great common denominator - where Flickr randoms from Austria and Brazil AND people I've known for 20 years all seem moved to say "oh that's nice"... cats. Everyone loves cats.

Mike, everyone loves all your pictures, wherever they are!

Also, Tracer Hand, I like your Instagram account.

What Dr Casino says rings a bell. There is a kind of task of documenting one's own life, photos, words, whatever, which is lonely and may feel a pointless burden, but I think is worth persisting with. Otherwise, as Lawro would say, we might as well pack up and go home.

Oh - we *are* home.

I'm like forks, use it for posting art and following other people in my art groups. I hardly post any social stuff, I'm sure that's 99% down to having a family and no social life lol or time to do all the processing and curating I used to on flickr, but I miss taking that time to make good photos, I feel like the square format and phone only consumption don't encourage that. Maybe that's just old man yelling at cloud.

they now let you post non-square photos! (but in multi-photo posts, they all have to be the same proportions and orientation, or it forces them all to square.)

totally agreed about phone viewing. insta/phone is good for some kinds of experiences, but doesn't lend itself to many others. and of course, it lacks all the album/collection organizational stuff that flickr permits. feels like a "reddit vs. ilx" parallel -- just a firehose of stuff instantly disappearing into the void, where with every independent voice just screaming in parallel and then forgotten, versus a durable and engaged conversation. the latter is compelling to me, while the former is just exhausting.

4x5 vs 1x1 fight

I started finally using this thing for something other than lurking art accounts. Been posting albums from my collection after seeing other people do it. Better than letting those things sit on my shelf in secret. Kind of fun to share and get digital high fives while staying pretty anonymous.

What's the deal with IGTV, i.e. why does a >1 min long video have to be artificially cordoned off to some separate part of instagram where you have to click "keep watching," esp since this doesn't even seem to happen when you view it on the web

User error

yeah it's fucking dumb and annoying

Locked out of my account until I furnish my date of birth. Am I overreacting or is this a good excuse to quit IG which I've long wanted to do?

I just gave them a fake one, no consequences I can see

Can I use yours?

But seriously, they do warn you not to give a fake one, but I was wondering how they would possibly know and what they could possibly do if they did know

Giving a giant social media company your personal identifying information? What could possibly go wrong?

I gave them the right year but not the right month or day. So far, my account still works.

Josefa it's twelvety neverteenth, nineteen aught sixtytwelve

I think this is a CYA move in case some 13 year old sees a butt (we did due diligence!). Can't imagine there'd be any consequences for lying if you're an adult.

The new layout is horrible. Just thought I'd throw that in there.

The privacy issues mentioned above would worry me.

But my main feeling about IG these days is just that the nature of the feed has changed so much, and badly.

Roughly, it used to be:

* chronological sequence of things that people you follow have posted.

Then it became:

* algorithmically enhanced stream of posts from people you follow, not in chronological order anymore but with your 'favourites' at the top, etc.

That was fine.

But now it seems to be:

* a few posts from people you follow; an equal number of posts from people you don't follow but are deemed to be related or relevant; an equal number of adverts; many of them in reel / video form.

Something that seemed relatively modest and manageable even, what, 2-3 years ago, is no longer. It seems fairly openly to have become more of an advertising site, with occasional interruptions from content from people you actually know.

That's my own experience at least.

I deleted it from my phone about 6 months ago and have barely thought about it since. I'd take the opportunity to get rid.

i was kicked off of facebook and instagram last year and miss neither. they’re bad

I think you can resolve some if not all of your issues by not using the app and just accessing IG via a browser with a good adblocker, PF.

The only app I know, and I'm advised to ditch it !

I think someone already said it above but who decided that this was the place to put restaurant menus.

I find the browser experience far superb to the app

I definitely use the browser version for my daily posts. Far more convenient.

pinefox if you tap the "..." top right of an "algorithmic" post you can turn off suggested posts for a month, I think it is.

twelvety neverteenth, nineteen aught sixtytwelve

― assert (matttkkkk),

orange

I don't use it often and when I do it's the browser version. Is there something heinous I'm missing besides the legit privacy worries?

When people talk about 'the browser version', TBH I am not sure what they are referring to.

Are they talking about using a computer, or (as I expect is normal) a mobile phone?

My impression is that the app (the thing where you press the IG symbol?) is normal for a phone.

I sense that people may be saying: you should use eg: Google Chrome, on a phone, and access IG from that.

I am not really sure how to do that, though.

I could try it but I am really surprised to hear that it is the norm!

MattKKK's advice looks good - I should at least try that.

I've seen a few different folks in my feed mentioning it, but apparently the major labels (esp. Warner) are really stepping up the crackdown on including even a snippet of their music in a post or story.

Time to turn off suggested posts. Oh no, although I hate baseball and golf I'm a mere human who is easily distracted by moving images so now I must be force fed baseball and golf clips ad infinitum!

yeah suggested posts in the app (and the ads) are very annoying. I find the web browser experience is much better

instagram appears to be transforming into a lame version of tiktok? every third post is a video? thanks i hate it

the new UX pretty much killed my already withered interest in it

I still don't get it. Have never tried using it on a phone though.

I follow some interior design Instas and a few have been doing videos and commenting "insta says I need to do more reels/videos etc to get my followers up" but it totally does not work when you're trying to look at the nice cornicing in someone's living room. But I guess the algorithm wants what the stupid algorithm wants.

I don't really understand the difference between reels and videos, but I have definitely gotten myself stuck in terrible timewarps scrolling through random suggested reels, most of which are not even particularly entertaining. It's like they have an addictive substance in them but one that doesn't actually cause pleasure, just pure distraction.

Like eating chips

Yeah, like bad chips. Like a plain old bag of Lays.