Technology

This is basically how I feel about Instagram. I just can't understand why people use the platform, or even how they do.

Every time I try to use the app, I just end up closing it in frustration a couple of minutes later. What's the point in following people when the algorithm is just going to show me a randomized assortment of their posts from the past week where every one is followed by a "suggested" post from somebody I don't follow and then a "sponsored" post (ad). And then it stops after like 20 posts and refuses to load any more because "You're all caught up from the past 3 days!", even if I haven't opened it in 5 months.

I guess following people whose content you're interested in has gone out of style in favor of consuming whatever the algorithm vomits up in front of you. I feel like even Tik Tok does a better job of letting you see content from people you're following, and that thing is basically all algorithm.

And now I sound like my parents in the 2010s trying to figure out why people use Facebook...

You don't like a bunch of people shouting at each other across a cafeteria? It kind of explains why I never got twitter either.

It's not. You have the "explore" tab which is more like "today's viral toots" (which tend to be a lot more varied than Lemmy's "All/Top 24h" since Lemmy is a link aggregator and doesn't really lend itself to jotting down thoughts or diatribes), and you have your personal timeline which is people you actively follow. It's not a cafeteria, it's your RSS feed.

Where it gets shouty is in replies, especially as those get federated weirdly. But that's only a problem for the few percent of users who are making content, not for consumers.