Privacy

People you know in real life.

I mostly left the platform over a bunch of little things that pushed me away (Explore feed going from friends of friends—things I'd care about—to ads and meme pages full of hot takes that would not get off no matter how much I put "Not Interested"; Shopping tab instead of Notifications; Reels existing in general, etc.) but I still have the account.

It has some nice pictures of me and my friends that time ate the original copies of because I was like 10 and not perfectly diligent about making backups, and that I have not gotten around to saving the Instagram copy of yet. (Now that I say this I probably should!) There are some people I talk to over Instagram Direct Message because I do not have contact information for them otherwise and I like them enough to maintain the relationship but we're not close enough for me to feel okay requesting a phone number. And finally, I have all those saved posts and tutorials that I never got around to and that I swear I'll get around to someday.

When I check back in to talk to some of those people I see people I know in real life posting pictures from their personal life. You could argue they are advertising an image of themselves, how great they have it, etc. but some people are just posting their life—including the not-so-pretty struggles like that they just got diagnosed with cancer.

I get the narrative is Instagram Bad, and I completely get why—I heavily decreased my usage of it for a reason—but that does not mean all the people left on there are also bad or Fake and Bad Overly Image-Obsessed Human Beings Making Your, Yes Your Self-Esteem Worse. I do wonder if Instagram would have acquired all these things I dislike if Meta did not buy it.