I've had a personal Instagram account since 2011 when I purchased my very first iPhone. As soon as I downloaded the app I loved it. It was visual, I was able to add filters and write quick captions to share with friends. Speaking of friends, I was able to (in chronological order, R.I.P.) see what they were up to, discover a new place to eat or drink from what they shared and find new people to follow based on hashtags I used and photos I liked. Nowadays, I rarely see a friend's post. I'm looking at some brand or person I barely know at the top of my home feed. And, when I go to the explore tab I'm seeing posts with thousands of likes when really all I want is to find are posts with 50-100 likes uploaded by someone more relatable to me. I'm seeing accounts with 10k+ followers with posts that barely have any engagement. It's discouraging to see an account with that many followers as someone who works in social media, works full-time and wants to pursue a side hustle sharing my everyday life (and thrift finds, which I have yet to post about go figure).
As of yesterday, Instagram is 'killing off' fake followers (article for more info here). This is a relief to me since I've personally never bought fake followers, although I am followed by a few so I'm *slightly* concerned about the follower drop I'm about to see. Hopefully this update brings authenticity back to the platform. Let's see if anything can be done about those fake like/comment bots. If you are interested in seeing what one of those click farms looks like click here. In the meantime, I'll be manually engaging with posts I see and following hashtags that interest me to organically expand the number of followers/engagement.
On a brighter note, I do enjoy some of the updates Instagram has provided over the years such as GIFs in stories, IG Stories itself (a Snapchat clone done better), and the ability to follow hashtags.
What's your favorite Instagram feature? Are you nervous or relieved about this fake follower purge?