How to Make Instagram Less of a Crap Show
Have you noticed that Instagram sucks right now? You open the app, scroll through the feed and think, “Who the hell are these people?” In its heyday, Instagram was a simple social media app where friends could follow other friends and follow their lives through funny photos and filters. Now you are being served fake TikTok from “celebrities” that you are not interested in. Let’s fix this.
What happens to the Instagram feed?
Instagram changes are unpopular with a wide range of users. Hell, even Kim Kardashian has accused the company of trying to be TikTok . The Kardashians have a point: The company is testing a new feature that shows photos and videos in 9:16 full screen in your feed, and people aren’t thrilled. Even Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, thinks the feature is ” not very good yet ” and insists that it is currently being tested on a small percentage of users.
However, this is only one criticism of the platform. I think the main problem is that Instagram shows us a lot of content that we don’t care about. Of course, moving to video is clearly haunting TikTok’s success, but if we see videos from friends and family or from creators we want to follow, that’s fine . The onslaught of posts from other Instagram accounts that we don’t care about drives us crazy.
Don’t use the default Instagram feed
One quick way to make sure you don’t see posts from irrelevant Instagram accounts is to avoid the default Instagram feed. Instead, you should use the “Followings” or “Favorites” feeds to only see posts from the accounts you’re interested in. These feeds do not show featured posts or show you ads. Also, they are chronological . It really is the fastest way to clean up your feed and make Instagram interesting again.
The Follows channel is the easiest to use: in the main Instagram feed, click Instagram, then select Follows. Here, you’ll only see posts from the accounts you’re currently following on Instagram, and won’t be hindered by suggested posts or other annoying “features.” It makes Instagram a little more like the day you followed to see what your friends were up to or to keep up with the life and work of an interesting person.
If your goal is to view posts from the accounts that interest you the most , you should spend some time on the Favorites feature. “Favorites” has a twofold advantage: not only does it have a section dedicated exclusively to posts from your favorites, but Instagram actually places posts from this list at the top of your main feed. This is a win-win.
To add accounts to your favorites, tap your profile in the lower right corner, tap the hamburger menu in the upper right corner, then select Favorites. Now start adding as many favorites as you want. Instagram will prompt you to add accounts, but you can find any account you’re currently following to add. When you’re done, click Confirm Favorites.
Now go back to your main feed, click “Instagram”, then select “Favorites” to only see posts from the selected group.
Block recommended posts on Instagram (temporarily)
Suggested posts are often annoying. Sure, sometimes the algorithm delivers a message you like to watch, but most of the time you’re scrolling through your feed to look for messages from people you follow, not from people you don’t know. Isn’t that what the Explore page is about?
Instagram doesn’t let you turn off recommended posts, but the app lets you “snooze” them for a month. Better than nothing. To do this, tap the “X” in the upper right corner of the message, then select “Snooze all suggested messages in the feed for 30 days.”
Once those suggested messages come back, you can repeat the process to keep your sanity for another month. Or you can go back to the Follows and Favorites feeds and never see them again.
Tell the Instagram algorithm you’re sick of his shit
Suggested posts in your feed and Explore page appear because Instagram thinks their content is what you want to see. When you watch a video long enough, or even bookmark a post, the algorithm knows that it has caught your attention. But often it is not known whether you hated something or not. Say it.
The next time something appears in your feed or Explore page that you don’t care about, tap the three dots that appear on the post and select Not Interested. This won’t magically fix the situation, but it will make it more likely that the algorithm will avoid similar content in the future.
[ NDP ]