#Hashtag: Understand the complaints that led to the pause in Instagram tests

In the last week, celebrities and anonymous people filled social networks with complaints about Instagram’s changes, comparing new features of the network to the Chinese competitor, TikTok. The movement gained greater prominence when personalities such as sisters Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner published a viral image that asked the platform to stop trying to look like the “neighbor app”.

In response to the great repercussion of the movement, which even had a petition for Meta to listen to users, Instagram announced this Thursday (28) that it will reduce video suggestions and pause tests in full screen mode worldwide, for undetermined time. Both features were a clear attempt to “tiktokize”.

Despite the announced break, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, told the audience that videos have become increasingly relevant on Instagram. This Friday (29), he published a sequence of Stories on his profile, explaining what changes with the ad.

Among the changes he points out that reducing the delivery of videos for those who prefer photos is difficult. “They’re growing up with or without us.” The company points to a 30% increase in the time people spend watching Reels on Facebook and Instagram, one of the reasons it continues to make changes to the algorithm.

In this sense, experts heard by the blog #Hashtag claim that, despite complaints, this is a global trend. The format intensified when TikTok began to become popular among quarantined people in early 2020. Even that year, netizens were already comparing the two networks and questioning whether Instagram was becoming obsolete.

Aline Bak, an expert in digital influence, mentor and digital marketing strategist, considers videos important tools to bring dynamism to Instagram, and points out that the audience currently consumes everything very quickly.

Mariana Mesquita, a specialist in content strategy, explains that the change in the dynamics of the environment has reduced the connection between people due to the commercial appeal she adopted. “Now the strategy for pushing content is to be part of the trends, using the music and the filter of the moment, in the vertical video format, and that makes it difficult to create authentic and original content,” she says.

For Lorelay Fox, stage name and drag persona of Danilo Dabague, 35, who has more than 680,000 followers on the app, this dynamic is neither new nor uncomfortable.

The “grandma”, as she is known by fans, compares the dynamics to the use of tags, themes in evidence that guided YouTube productions a few years ago, and believes that it is even easier to produce because it generates a sense of online collectivity.

To #Hashtag he says that Instagram has lost its essence due to the frequency of changes employed by the network, in addition to criticizing the lack of support from the platform: “It’s like arriving at the same job every day, but the company has changed. You have to adapt over time all”.

For Matheus Diniz, 29, creator of the Greengo Dictionary page in 2019, abrupt changes have already been cause for anxiety, but the graphic designer points out that this is not a particularity of this network. “Working with all social networks is hostile,” he says.

Currently with 1.6 million followers, the page that translates typical Brazilian expressions into English in a good-natured tone, was born with static publications. Matheus believes that it was a process of evolution, but he managed to adapt the content to meet the algorithm without losing its identity.

The same happened with Melted Videos, a hybrid page created in 2016, which today has 1.5 million followers. Felipe Misale, 35, broadcaster who founded Melted, and João Miguel, 33, an architect and urban planner who is now part of the team of eight people who manage content focused on memes, agree with the negative psychological impacts of networks, but believe that the speed of tool changes have the greatest impact for small profiles.

Unlike Dabague, they say they receive good support from Instagram, but believe that access to the service should be more widespread among all users.

Specialist Aline Bak also points out that the platform’s attempt to make the internet user follow more and more accounts caused stress and fueled the wave of complaints. Despite coming under the spotlight from a backlash, Bak says the platform is sovereign and that won’t change quickly — that’s because it’s part of Meta, a technology conglomerate that also owns Facebook and Whatsapp.