Dear Facebook…

Please don’t shovel your own grave

Dear Facebook,

please don’t ruin Instagram for the millions of users who used to love the service.

I understand that your goal is to maximize the time spent on the platform. And I’m certain your A/B tests tell you clearly that an experience with more recommended content of accounts you “might like” increases the addictiveness of your service. But in contrast to this gain stands a big loss that’s difficult to measure: user loyalty.

Currently, the experience does not feel personal anymore. Scrolling down the feed, I see an ad, a recommended post from someone I don’t know, an ad, yet another recommended post, another ad, and maybe if I am lucky a post from a friend. This is not why I use the service. And I am not alone. Many of my friends complain. It’s no longer the social experience of staying in the loop with your friends. It’s a content-overloaded, poorly executed clone of TikTok working increasingly hard to hook users to the continued dopamine rushes. If you follow this path of single-mindedly optimizing for time spent on the platform you succeed in the short-run and satisfy investors’ expectations to make a return. But in the long run, and I am certain of this, someone will take over with a new service providing the once-loved value Instagram initially provided.

Dear Facebook, please place your users above profits. And don’t shovel your own grave.

Best,
Louis