Instagram has long been accused of stealing features from platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitter/X. It appears that the company has looked to YouTube for its latest idea: unskippable ads that you have to watch for a period of time before being able to scroll further.
A Redditor posted images of the Instagram ad breaks. FireCubX writes that users will suddenly find they have hit the bottom of their feed, so to speak, and can’t scroll down any further. An “ad break” icon will appear with a countdown timer that prevents users from browsing through more content until they view an ad, at which point the counter starts running down.
I’m happy I only have a lemmy account
Nonetheless, they’ll probably get away with it, because other than among a handful of autistic furries, there’s no demand for non-algorithmic, non-enshittified social networks.
The celebrities and brand-builders who use Instagram to grow their brand aren’t switching to Pixelfed or Misskey because, without algorithms boosting them, there’s no clout to be had. Artists, indie bands, vintage clothing sellers and other self-marketers are staying put for similar reasons. (Basically, if your goal is “self-promote at scale and hope to make ends meet” rather than “find a handful of weird friends with the same kind of damage as you”, the fediverse is worse than useless: it’s lost time and effort with nothing to show for it.) Your normie friends, who want to keep up with their favourite pop stars and tattoo artists and have a busy schedule without an extra 15 minutes a day for a social network few people use, aren’t going to add Pixelfed to their dopamine loops.