Dear old Instagram, go to hell!

Instagram has gone to shit! A process that has been going on for a long time. Once upon a time, at least by the standards of modern apps, Instagram was a fantastic program for anyone interested in sharing photos with each other. This included professional photographers and happy amateurs in a wide range of fields of interest. 

I'm getting tired of constantly being banned, having pictures taken down, and being harassed by a company that relies on users creating content for them. Something I've been doing for many years now.

But then the times caught up, and a brazen competitor stole all the young people. All that was left were us old men and women who liked photography and had various interests that could be combined with pictures. Mine happen to be two: bicycles and knives, both of which look good in pictures.

The new owners of Meta didn't want it that way. They would now compete for the favor of younger people by becoming more like TikTok. Of course, it didn't work out how many variations of moving images, such as films and "Reels," they presented.

Then there was the issue of the feed. It was simple at first. You got it chronologically from the accounts you followed. Those who posted frequently at the right times were seen the most. In recent years, it has been completely destroyed in favor of mostly advertising and accounts you might be vaguely interested in, even though half of the suggestions are more or less off the wall. All in the name of holy commercialism.

It is a line of cleverly written code in the form of an "algorithm" that controls what you should watch, not you. Such important decisions cannot be left to the will of a weak human being.

Around the same time, it became almost impossible to grow "organically". That is, you are discovered through searches on accounts and hashtags that lead interested people to your account, after which they start following you. In this way, my account grew in the first few years by between five hundred and a thousand followers a month. Now I'm slowly but surely going backwards. At most, I had 23,500 followers and now I'm down to 22,026 at the time of writing.

The reason is simple in my opinion. Some people refer to "shadow bans" and various conspiracy theories. I argue that it's simply plain greed that applies. To grow, Meta wants you to buy advertising space or promote your posts. The latter costs money, I might add. People can't no longer find them because they search within the area where you operate and like what they see.

Here was a picture of a Ferramonster Glideman that was horribly illegal and consequently was taken down

All that would have been bad enough, but the fact is that it's worse than that. Meta has also started boycotting all content in certain sectors. One of them is unfortunately knives. They consider them weapons, period. This in turn means that many accounts that deal with this topic are more or less periodically or sometimes constantly blocked and sometimes even shut down. This applies to both companies and private individuals.

My "Knivesandbikes", an account I've had since 2014, is, unfortunately, one of those affected. As you can see above, the bots select a number of images and say that they violate Meta's "community guidelines", which is the explanation given if you click on the text "show why" in the example above. Then you appeal and sometimes they go through, sometimes not. The legal uncertainty is total. Not least because bots are scrolling and banning and people who may overturn their decisions. If there is anyone interested in watching, that is.

 

Being banned means in concrete terms that none of your content is searchable, can be found via hashtags, or is recommended in someone's feed. This means that only a small selection of your hardcore enthusiasts of followers actually see what you post. I used to be able to have a "reach" of many thousands per picture, often more than I had followers if someone else re-posted my pictures, today I am happy if it gets a few thousand. The best pictures could get between 1500-3000 likes, today you are happy if you pass a hundred.

Some people think that the solution is to boycott the platform. The problem with that solution is twofold. First, a lot of time and energy is invested in a well-functioning account on Instagram. Second, there are actually no particularly good alternatives. If you don't want to make videos for TikTok, the options are few. The few options that do exist often have limitations on the number of posts, etc.

Well, quite a few readers chose to check in here during February.

For that reason, I continue to focus on this blog instead. Thanks to all of you loyal or possibly unfaithful readers, it is growing slowly but surely. A couple of years ago, I had around 6-7000 readers per month, and it has now increased significantly—first to 10-12000, and now, who knows what happened lately, but the statistics are clear.

I know I am a slob who sticks to the written word and has not thrown myself over to YouTube (although I have a small channel without viewers where I post some knife-throwing to be able to link to my reviews) but it seems that some want to take things at a slightly slower pace.

I am now very happy to admit that. So thank you to all of you!!

/ J - Angry at IG, happy for all readers