Social media companies seem rather delusional in their own way. They all act like their service is more important to the public than oxygen and no matter what they claim, they don’t listen to their users.Twitter is all about not giving us an edit button. Facebook is all about them gathering any and all information about us, whether we give them permission or not, and using that against us while being the source for political rants, your older relatives and people you know from high school. And Snapchat, well the less said about Snapchat and what they did, the better.Instagram, who is owned by Facebook, seemed to be following along with this tradition by releasing an update that had many up in arms believing Instagram made their app worse. The new update took away the ability to scroll up and down through posts and instead, one tapped or swiped to move to the next post, similar to Instagram stories.This morning, half the trending topics on Twitter had to do with Instagram, including “Wtf Instagram” so that should tell you a lot about the reaction. Reaction was resoundingly negative with just about everyone hating the change and others jumping in on the fun.
Opening up Instagram this morning like … pic.twitter.com/e0EhB9mdPb
— Denver Broncos (@Broncos) December 27, 2018
Instagram did what? pic.twitter.com/7xApGf91K7
— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) December 27, 2018
instagram, if i wanted tinder, i would have downloaded tinder.
— Elle Mills (@millselle) December 27, 2018
Us: Instagram please just bring back chronological order.
Instagram: WE'RE GIVING YOU SIDE SCROLLING.
Us: WTF Instagram!?!?!?!?!?! pic.twitter.com/NWgeBH92or— Mindy Lu Who (@romancebooknerd) December 27, 2018
Me after the Instagram update. WTF Instagram? pic.twitter.com/2dm0pnNC35
— SauceMonsters (@SauceMonsters) December 27, 2018
Wtf Instagram? No I don’t want to tap through posts like with stories.
I want to be scrollin’, and hatin’ pic.twitter.com/NSL6af8RiG
— Bianca Nieuwenhuis (@BiancaNieu) December 27, 2018
In less than an hour, Instagram reverted back and everyone is able to scroll once again. According to Instagram head Adam Mosseri, it was a test that accidentally went to more people than they anticipated and it wasn’t meant to be a widespread feature.
That was supposed to be a very small test that went broad by accident. Should be fixed now. If you’re still seeing it simply restart the app. Happy holidays! 😬
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) December 27, 2018
Reading between the lines of Mosseri’s response, that tells me that while this isn’t a feature yet, it was something Instagram was planning to do and that it very well could be a future feature. Hopefully, after seeing the overwhelming backlash to this, Instagram will listen and avoid being the next Snapchat.
