> And because I can't trust the feed, I keep a mental list of accounts (maybe 5-6) to "check on" manually for content, which is way more work than I should have to spend on a photo-sharing app.

I use a third-party app for Twitter, since they've abandoned any relationship with chronological reality, but even so I keep a separate list of people whose tweets I absolutely don't want to miss that I check every few days.

Gosh, I miss RSS.