Earlier in September, the social media giant Facebook rolled out a major update to Instagram, another social media platform that it owns. However, people are pretty upset with the said update.
The place where Instagram used to have icons for viewing your notifications or sharing a new post was replaced with new icons for Shopping features and Instagram’s Reels.
Moreover, there is nothing unusual about the change. Developers change the platform’s layout and design on a pretty regular basis. However, those changes are usually for the benefit of the users. Most of the developers’ changes add new features, develop an existing feature further, or make them more accessible.
In this case, however, none of the recent changes were for the benefit of the users. Rather, it made it more difficult to use Instagram. In addition, it seems that the change intends merely to make more money for Facebook and not to make the app better for users. This explains why people are not very happy.
Average Users Do Not Find Reels and Instagram Shopping Beneficial
For the average user, Reels, and Instagram Shopping are not the reason why people use Instagram. That does not mean that no one uses the said features. However, those are definitely not the core purpose of the platform. Instagram has always been a platform for sharing photos, and recently, stories.
The aforementioned issue is important because the social media giant did not change Instagram in a way that intends to make either of the functions better or more accessible. Anyone can argue that Facebook broke the first and most important tool when it comes to designing software!
“Do not do any harm. “
-Everyone
What Most People Use Instagram For
By far, two of the most common things that people do when they open their Instagram accounts is to share a photo or a story and to check who liked the photo that they shared. Every time that users open the app, they tap on the icons that represent these patterns of use by instinct.
Moreover, Facebook is aware of this fact. It knows how its users interact with Instagram. In addition, it is aware that a lot of people are not using Reels and Instagram Shopping. It knows that what users really want is to do on the platform is to check their likes or scroll through their feed.
For this reason, Facebook took the routines and patterns that a user has when they are sharing photos to Instagram. Then, it swapped out those buttons for ones that would bring Facebook more profits. Literally, the social media giant took the patterns of use people have when using Instagram and used it against them.
Sending A Message Costs Money
Take it like this: the messaging app that you have been using for so long suddenly swapped out the “send” button to “send us $10.” It also hid the send button somewhere that you never tap on. You are so used to tapping on the send button on its previous location by default. For this reason, you tap on the “send us $10” every time you need to sen0d a message.
What is even worse is that when you want to do something when you open your app, like sending a message, in the case mentioned above, it is more difficult and takes you longer as you need to develop a whole new pattern. This is the reason why the recent changes to Instagram’s features are pretty devious for many people.
What Facebook did is literally bait and switch. Users tap where they have always tapped whenever they open the app. However, there is suddenly an entirely different feature there. The social media giant is simply hoping that people will be so fascinated by the new features that they will get over the frustration that the recent change has caused in the first place.
To make the issue even worse, almost none of the users has affection for Facebook. True enough, people use Facebook products on a daily basis to connect with their friends and family. However, I do not think that there is anyone who actually “loves” Facebook.
Everyone Likes to Buy Facebook Likes and Followers Still
But the fact mentioned above does not apply to Instagram because people actually like to use this app. The reason is that Instagram has always been simple to use, easy to navigate, and uncluttered. In fact, the worst thing that users ever said about Instagram is that it is still not allowing them to view photos that they are shared by followers.
That is probably another example of how the social media giant puts its own interests before its users. This is exactly what is happening now– Facebook is prioritizing what brings it more profits. By doing so, it is turning Instagram into a worse experience for users. This is ultimately why people still find it worth the risk to buy their Facebook followers and likes.
This leads us to the conclusion that no one should trust tech companies. It is not as if tech companies like Facebook really care about how people actually want to use their platforms. Rather, what is clear is that they would rather use those platforms against their users.
Final Thoughts
It is unclear whether the social media giant really cares about the complaints that it is receiving due to the recent changes that it deed to Instagram. However, while people are not happy about these changes, we cannot deny that we will not stop using the platform since it has already become a part of our everyday lives. For this reason, people showing how upset they are with the updates is probably not really important for Facebook. Besides, there is a huge chance that it will not change the Reels and Instagram Shopping features. This is because it is aware that people will keep using Instagram, even when it does not retract the changes that it made.
Needless to say, what we are left for users now is to start getting familiar with the changes that Faebook made to Instagram.
