Why Artists and Activists are Abandoning Instagram

Instagram famously loves to make unpopular decisions – most of which are eventually reversed due to them being, er, unpopular. Take, for example: scrapping the chronological feed, banning people from sharing grid posts in Stories or – the world’s shortest-lived (and most cursed) update – horizontal scrolling. Instagram also happens to love ripping off other apps – see: Snapchat, TikTok and now BeReal – as well as censoring some of its most loyal users. It will come as no surprise then, that the platform has combined all of these horrible little hobbies into one big, bad update: a full-screen feed that prioritises “suggested Reels” from people you don’t even know. Sound familiar? 

Although the update has been slowly rolling out to users since May, it all came to a head last month when a post and subsequent petition urging Meta, IG’s parent company, to “make Instagram Instagram again” went viral – notably catching the attention of Insta royalty Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian, who both shared the post in their stories. Last week (July 26), Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, responded to the backlash with a video that defended the Reels-focused update, while also calling it “not yet good”. Then, two days later, Instagram conceded to pressure, announcing that it would reverse some of the changes.

But for those who are resistant to the video-focused future of Instagram, the platform’s (probably temporary) backtracking might be too late. Many artists, meme creators and activists who rely on infographics have painstakingly built their brands on Instagram, specifically because of its still image focus. And while some may find it easy to adapt to video, others will inevitably be forced off the platform – if not for being camera shy, then for an algorithm-induced lack of engagement. For many, this isn’t a worry for the future – it’s happening now.

“Back in 2018, I would expect to get 100 likes per minute on a post in the first hour or so, but now I struggle to reach even 1,000 likes,” says London-based Erika Gajda, the brainchild of @Swipes4Daddy, a viral screenshot page documenting Gajda’s droll conversations with dating app dads. As well as suffering with Instagram’s algorithm, Gajda says @Swipes4Daddy is severely shadowbanned, having been taken down several times for supposedly breaking community guidelines.

“I have over 160,000 followers, but sometimes my posts are only seen by 20,000 people,” she adds. “I’ve started going through longer stretches of not posting because there’s really no point if no one can see them.” Although she doesn’t make any money off @Swipes4Daddy, Gajda says she relies on it for “proof of concept for writing projects”, and says the lack of engagement is “simply embarrassing”.

Gajda is not alone. “For anyone relying on Instagram as a platform for photography or small business promotion, the rules look set to change,” says social media expert and Instagram advisor Sara Tasker. “It’s still entirely possible to use Instagram for these purposes, but we’re facing a choice: evolve your posts to the new preferred format, or sacrifice visibility as a result.”

As screenshots are particularly hard to adapt for video, Gajda may soon have no choice but to abandon the platform. “If they keep refusing to change back to the old Instagram, I’ll simply stop posting,” she tells VICE. “It’s unbearable to see eight years of research and screenshots go down the drain – it’s not fair that this virtual space is being destroyed.”

Fairness aside, it’s worth questioning in business terms why a social media platform would pursue an update so unwanted by some of its most steadfast creators. “Platforms expect a certain amount of user grumbling no matter what changes they make,” explains Frances Corry, a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre on Digital Culture and Society, whose work has explored the closure of social media platforms. “But after some time, users adjust their habits, get used to a new configuration and we largely forget the interface was any other way.”

Essentially though, Corry adds, Instagram has so much capital already that it can pretty much do whatever it wants. “Users have already built out a robust network of people they follow and who follow them,” she explains, “[which provides] decreased incentive to leave.”

However, Corry does concede that this latest change signals a “fundamental shift in emphasis, rather than just a new feature-set”. And if embittered artists are anything to go by, it could mark a mass exodus. Eliza Hatch, a London-based photographer and activist, who founded the photo campaign Cheer Up Luv, says Instagram’s move away from still imagery “has basically rendered the original story-sharing format of Cheer Up Luv redundant.”

Hatch launched the account – a photo series telling stories of sexual harassment and misogyny – in 2017, and says it was “catapulted into the public eye with the help of early Instagram.” But, she adds, if she were starting it now, “it would be a very different story”. Today, Cheer Up Luv’s still images get just a fraction of what they used to, while her Reels get 20 times the amount of reach.

It makes sense that Hatch has adapted to video – though she says it’s a topic of “inner turmoil and stress”, adding that she “probably wouldn’t have been pushed to work with video if the algorithms had stayed the same.” While she admits that this “could be a good thing”, she also feels conflicted about featuring more heavily on the account herself. “It’s not a space I want to dominate, nor a movement I want to centre myself in,” she says. “Finding that balance is only going to get harder for other activists, artists, and creatives.”

For some, speaking to camera isn’t something they’re interested in or able to do. “I suffer from body dysmorphic disorder, which makes making videos extremely difficult for me,” says London-based photographer Santiago Franco Schicke. “And as a trans person starting my transition, I’m at a stage where I don’t want to be seen just yet.”

As Instagram has pushed forward with its prioritisation of video, Franco Schicke has seen their engagement decline. “At this point, I don’t care as much as I should,” they say. “As an artist who’s slowly but surely quitting the platform [in favour of my own website], I’m not worried. It provided an easy and uncomplicated way to share our art, but it also made artists think that they needed to ‘stay relevant’ in order to be successful. I’ve come to the realisation that my work is worth more than likes.” 

Corry doesn’t believe these updates will lead to Instagram’s demise. “Tumblr is a good comparison when thinking about changes to a platform that seemed to fundamentally alter its DNA,” she says. Tumblr lost swathes of its users, notably LGBTQ+ people, after it banned sexually explicit content in 2018, which had always been a huge part of the site’s culture. However, where Tumblr was responding to legal pressure – due to the presence of child pornography on the site – Corry says Instagram is “responding to commercial concerns”. She explains: “This means that if these changes do not take off the way they’d like them to, Instagram has the option to shift their path.”

Even so, artists and creators are already looking for alternative ways of displaying and promoting their work. For Gajda, this is by taking it off social media completely. “My current plan is to take my project offline and into a new space – whether that means writing a book, hosting a podcast, or developing a TV show around the idea of @Swipes4Daddy,” she says.

“As far as [moving to a different] photo-sharing app, there’s nothing else out there that imitates what early Instagram provided. If the people at Instagram truly cared about their user base, they’d listen to everyone on the internet begging for them to stop rolling out these algorithm changes – but they’re not… I say this as someone who is very online and very on Instagram,” Gajda concludes, “Instagram fucking sucks.”

@britdawson