Instagram has become a marketplace for influencersand its co-founder, Kevin SystromHe’s not happy about it.
“I think we’ve lost the soul of what made Instagram Instagram”Systrom said during a podcast interview with technology journalist Kara Swisher.
Systrom says she used to go on Instagram to see what her friends and family were up to, but it has since become a business appliance as creators and brands use the platform to make money. “My biggest regret, I think, on Instagram is how commercial it has become”has regretted.
The problem, according to the founder of the social network, is that “Instagram incentives are to go more commercial, more creators, more deals, more advertising money”, which can have unintended social consequences.
This has “focused energy on people living seemingly incredible lives, without limits, doing the most elegant things, looking the best, wearing the most elegant clothes,” he said.
This creates a “scary” dynamic in which Instagram users think the facades they see on the app are people’s real lives.
“Life is very hard, and what people post on Instagram is the tip of the iceberg,” says Systrom. “It’s a race to the bottom to see who is the most perfect”.
In fact, the co-founder has seen the transformation of Instagram in his own feed. He says he has friends who used to upload photos of their daily lives and now they only post “#ads”. “That, to me, is not the Instagram we started.”
He highlighted BeReal as an alternative app where people can be themselves and capture themselves in real moments.
Systrom’s pronouncement on Instagram comes nearly 5 years after he left the company in 2018 in response to growing tensions with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He sold Instagram to Facebook, now Meta, in 2012 for 1 billion dollars. He is now one of the co-founders of Artifact, an AI-powered news app that launched earlier this year.
