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Instagram Will Show More Recent Posts Due To Algorithm Backlash (techcrunch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the new-and-improved dept.

Instagram announced today that it will show more new posts and stop suddenly bumping you to the top of the feed while you're scrolling. "With these changes, your feed will feel more fresh, and you won't miss the moments you care about," Instagram writes. TechCrunch reports: Instagram switched from a reverse chronological feed to a relevancy-sorted feed in June 2016, leading to lots of grumbling from hardcore users. While it made sure you wouldn't miss the most popular posts from your close friends, showing days-old posts made Instagram feel stale. And for certain types of professional content creators and merchants, cutting their less likable posts out of the feed -- like their calls to buy their products or follow their other social accounts -- was detrimental to their business. Instagram and Facebook moved to hide these posts over time because they can feel spammy.

29 comments

  1. FB owns Instagram by Snotnose · · Score: 3, Informative

    They will not only sell all your info to whomever, but when their API is used to it's fullest extent Zuck the Fuck will show up on national news saying "oops, my bad" while browbeating his worker bees into hiding the fact that FB's API's encourage this sort of thing.

    1. Re:FB owns Instagram by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I came here to say what the OP ( above ) said.

      Of course some idiots will continue to use Facebook and / or Instagram, but they are idiots.

      If you want to emulate them, look in the mirror and say : "Hello, Idiot".

    2. Re:FB owns Instagram by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because you think Slashdot isn’t tracking you as well? Have you not seen the host of tracking and ad scripts loaded by the site?

    3. Re:FB owns Instagram by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ad Block Plus says slashdot has 23 blocked adverts and trackers currently active on the website.

  2. Why don't sites get it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I *ALWAYS* want "most recent" first.
    This goes for *ALL* websites. For the love of fucking God and all things holy, stop trying to predict what you think I want to see. When you predict, you are ALWAYS WRONG.

    This goes for Yelp, Google reviews, Amazon, YouTube, FB, and the list goes on and on and on and on.

    1. Re: Why don't sites get it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Suck that corporate dick some more.

    2. Re: Why don't sites get it? by sexconker · · Score: 2

      Nope, he's right. Most recent FIRST. And include a full and obvious timestamp on it. I shouldn't have to hunt for a link to mouse over or some icon to click to expose a timestamp.

    3. Re:Why don't sites get it? by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Which sort order you want isn't what's important. What's important is that different people will want different sort orders. The correct solution to this problem is to let user pick which sort order they want applied to their feed. But the people making the UI for these things seem to be on an ego trip, and enjoy playing god by deciding how millions of users must use an app, so won't give their users the decency of choosing what they want.

      You see the same problem in Apple's walled garden, cellular carriers making certain apps on your phone undeletable, and printer manufacturers trying to restrict which ink cartridges you're allowed to use. VLC had the same problem - I and lots of others wanted to use the mouse wheel to seek (FF/RW) through the video. The main programmer thought it should control the volume, and refused to allow users to use it to seek. It was years before he finally relented and allowed an option to change the wheel's function to seek.

      The real problem here is lack of respect for the user. Treating them like cattle instead of customers, just because you can.

    4. Re: Why don't sites get it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cool story, Zuck cuck.

    5. Re: Why don't sites get it? by Reverend+Green · · Score: 2

      It's been said a million times, but it's still true: the users *are* cattle. They're the product. Advertisers, PR firms, and the regime are the customers.

    6. Re: Why don't sites get it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This reminds me of Google's insistence not to let Gmail users sort by email subject. Everytime I've looked into it, I got flooded by apologists telling me "that isn't how Gmail saves email" and "it is *better* to create tags and searches". I. DON'T. CARE. If I want to sort by subject line WHY should I have to download all of my Gmail to an offline client like Thunderbird, sort by subject, delete the newsletters I'm after, then resync up to Gmail? ?

      I'm all for new features and I understand programmers might get frustrated that users won't give some new features a chance and just want to keep using the software "the old way" ... but I'm sick of software companys telling me what I like as a way of changing my behaviour.

    7. Re: Why don't sites get it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem is that that's an odd use case, and to support it they would have to spend thousands of dollars in developer / QA / project manager time, just up front, plus maintenance.

      Not to mention the button to do it adds clutter, which is currently the cardinal sin of UI design.

      So you'll have to bring them a solid business case for it to be worthwhile for them to do it.

    8. Re: Why don't sites get it? by Cro+Magnon · · Score: 1

      It's been said a million times, but it's still true: the users *are* cattle.

      That's a bunch of bull!

      --
      Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
    9. Re:Why don't sites get it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For me it does NOT got for StackOverflow, putting the "best answer" first is the right call in that context.

      That said, reverse chronological is probably the best default choice, and should probably be an option in all contexts.

    10. Re:Why don't sites get it? by Mandrel · · Score: 1

      I'm the opposite. I hate how timelines are always moving on and scrolling off, despite some older interesting content still attracting comments. In this way timelines suck compared to forum threads, which are bumped to the top with each new reply.

      The increasing ephemeral nature of content and attention is killing our culture and intellectual lives.

      If I had my way, sites like Slashdot would have some LTS (long-term support) stories, which stay on the home page for an extended period while still popular. Comments on these stories would not start being published until a day after publication, and then in random order, so that fast, often poorly-considered responses don't get the first-mover advantage from which almost all online forums suffer. Comments on these stories would also stay open longer than the usual ten days.

      This comment will probably be seen by few, because it's on a second-page story from a whole twenty hours ago.

    11. Re:Why don't sites get it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Considering that VLC is Open Source... any of the complainers were free to make their own version with seek scrolling. Why didn't they? I guess it probably wasn't that big a deal for them or anyone else because they waited years for the developer to do it instead.

  3. I imagine it works like this. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 2

    While it made sure you wouldn't miss the most popular posts from your close friends, ...

    The algorithm, like the one on Twitter, makes visibility a popularity contest whereby people (accounts) with fewer followers and/or posts get dumped to the bottom of the feed, never to be noticed or loved by anyone.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re: I imagine it works like this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As it should be, and the least popular ones should get swirlies, just like in real life

    2. Re:I imagine it works like this. by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Yup, Twitter's algorithm is useless. It's IMPOSSIBLE to find the latest shit now. It's not chronological, and it's not even deterministic.

    3. Re:I imagine it works like this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Every time I see that stupid shit on Twitter, you know what I do? Refresh. Fuck that "Here's what you missed" nonsense. I'll see the damn feed in order, fuck off.

      I'm getting sick of sites pulling this nonsense. As if they know you better than you know yourself.
      All averages and pseudo-intellectual psychologists that think they are hot shit because they made some shit model that works less than half the time.
      Half the time can't even be replicated with the same damn people, never mind others.

    4. Re: I imagine it works like this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep nothing better then getting a prime traffic tip from the morning commute fresh at the top of my twitter feed as Iâ(TM)m heading out the door at the end of the work day

  4. Hardcore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Out of curiosity, what kind of a person is a hardcore instagram user? A teenage girl with pink iphones on both hands and who likes 1000 duckface selfies a minute?

    1. Re: Hardcore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In 2014, that's correct. In 2018, it's married women who want to look at pictures of dogs.

  5. scroll bumps by epine · · Score: 1

    Bumping my scrolling mid-flight is instantaneous carotid rupture territory.

    Some terminals do that when you're trying to cut and paste.

    Good thing my GP didn't get a BP reading during those moments, or I'd be on seven flavours of Lipitor already.

    1. Re: scroll bumps by Reverend+Green · · Score: 1

      What's shocking is that is the app's *intended* behavior. I always figured it was just an annoying bug in their shitty Agile(tm) software.

      Fuck you, Instagram. What scumbags.

  6. "algorithm backlash" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "algorithm backlash"

    instashit dev: ok guys let's tweak the algorithm. switch it back to order by created_date desc