If Instagram wasn’t already addictive enough, the company is adding a new feature meant to roll you through your feed even longer. As of today, Instagram will load ‘Recommended Posts’ at the end of your feed, once you’re up to date with updates from friends and other accounts you follow.
Normally when you get to the end of your feed, Instagram just shows a ‘You’re all caught!’ message and can view your older messages. Instead, after that message, you will now see standard suggested messages from other accounts – including ads, of course.
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Fortunately, you can view even older messages with the tap of a button – you will see the option directly below the received message. You can also tell Instagram if you are not interested in a suggested post by tapping on the three-point menu and selecting ‘not interested;’ that will tell the algorithm that it has modified something. Unfortunately, you can not completely disable suggested messages – they are here to stay.
As indicated by Engadget, the feature resembles the way TikTok works; it’s an easy way to keep users busy and find new accounts. Instagram has the Explore tab for those purposes too, but I personally never visit that hub. The new functionality could in theory be essentially more flexible – if forgettable, depending on your point of view.
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August 20, 2020 – 02:56 UTC published
