Hacker News Reader

Comment by racked | Hacker News Reader

Honestly I never understood the appeal.

A social network that forces you to wedge your content in images and short videos, while on Facebook you could share YouTube videos, music, interesting links, write-ups, you name it. How can anyone in their right mind prefer something as limiting as Instagram? Even its instant messenger is limited compared to Facebook's.

View on HN

The simplification is (was) part of the appeal. It felt clean and refreshing to mostly look at pretty photos with minimal text. And it was a much more positive space. Photos of vacations, food, clothes, pets, friends. No political fighting or conspiracy theories or bitching about an ex. The comment space, a usual cesspool of unmitigated negativity and cruelty, was conveniently tucked away.

I miss the pre-pandemic Instagram. Now, it feels like it's transformed into a more general-purpose, Facebook-like social network. Which I guess should have been predictable!

Instagram's formats feel nicer for getting updates from friends and family. No rants, just happy photos against usually a nice background.

Performative or commercial accounts make the experience worse though, and from what I understand these are being prioritized in the timeline.

People said the same thing about Twitter with its original 140 character limit. Just easily-consumable content you can scroll through. I enjoy the artwork I find on there. If I want YouTube links, music videos, news articles, etc I'll hit up Reddit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com