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Comment by newaccount74 | Hacker News Reader

I don't have an Instagram account, so please excuse my ignorance, but I was under the assumption that a lot of content on Instagram is "sponsored content" anyway? So you're looking at ads anyway?

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Instagram used to be mostly photos from people I knew or followed or whatever. Nowadays it is 95% ads/sponsored/influencer content. Almost pointless to visit. But I think this might be a result mostly of people not posting photos as much.

The irony is that the most promoted company on Facebook isn't paying for those ads with sponsorship.

I just opened Facebook and here's the top "suggested post". Of course it's a "news" story, which is itself just a repost of someone's Tiktok video. The Tiktok logo is prominently displayed in the tumbnail.

https://imgur.com/a/YJoiR4A

In between all that content, is Facebook Reels. Most promoted Reels are just reposts from Tiktok. There was literally a "Content Creator" named "It's gone viral on Tiktok!" that for a while was the most commonly promoted Facebook reel I would see.

Edit: here's a screenshot of Reels: https://imgur.com/a/OhVvbSf

Depends how you curate your feed.

Is there a way to curate away those sponsored posts?

Don't follow people with more than 5000 followers.

Sure. Unfollow when you see one.

I definitely see posts from accounts I’m not following.

Are you from 2012 or something? Instagram has been showing promoted posts from accounts I'm not following for ages.

Those are just ads. The posts up thread making a distinction between ads and sponsored content I take to mean influencers shilling company products/services directly in posts outside of the Facebook ad network.

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