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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.

1 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. 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.