I’d guess the simple answer may be that people don’t care/know, but for those that have ditched Facebook for whatever reason, yet still use Instagram, it’s a little surprising.
Is it partly a result of it being a more focused/limited form of social media that filters out some of the stuff people didn’t like from Facebook?
Unfortunately, you could say the same about WhatsApp…
WhatsApp is more problematic to leave though. Where I live, it’s the default messaging app everyone uses. I haven’t texted anyone in ages. And I can also see why it’s the default, WhatsApp is just better than the competition. It’s end-to-end encrypted, so Meta cannot read your messages directly, it has good markdown-like formatting support, it’s has a lot of features, and it’s relatively stable.
I’ve been using Telegram and Signal with friends, but honestly Telegram doesn’t exactly feel safer to me, especially with e2e encryption not enabled by default (last time I checked). And Signal is better, but sometimes just a pain to use. No Markdown-like syntax (though formatting is finally possible via GUI), it constantly keeps desyncing devices that I use once every few weeks, and we’ve had plenty of bugs with not seeing messages of eachother.
Now, I can accept that to a degree, in return for better privacy. But no way in hell are laypeople like my family going to switch. WhatsApp is too good and safe enough to remain dominant.
Yep. And by everyone I literally mean everyone. Every iPhone has whatsapp installed, my workplace uses it, every single one of my friends use it, my parents use it and my both grandmothers use it. Hell my pet gerbils probably have whatsapp too.
It’s funny in a lot of conversations about RCS WhatsApp users (mostly from outside US) make fun of RCS fans as if WhatsApp is not owned by a multinational corporation!
And WhatsApp, mother of the Standby Battery Drains. Bearer of the Wakelocks. Enemy of Deep Sleep.
It’s because most of them were using Instagram before Facebook acquired it and the transition was pretty seamless.
Agreed 100%
I’ve come across people who didn’t know Instagram is owned by Facebook, and people who thought meta and Facebook were different companies. I thought the rename was the stupidest thing ever until I saw it did actually work on some people.
Working in the film, TV & commercial industry as production and camera crew it is impossible to not to have instagram to connect and network.
I did ditch Facebook years ago though and recently reddit for lemmy. I am interested in pixelfed in general, but it will not replace instagram at the moment for my work relations unfortunately.
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Probably because it doesn’t fit the vibe of Meta. Lots of influencers use it so people just don’t care and don’t need to step back and look at the bigger picture.
Because it got popular when it was it’s own independent company, and THEN Facebook bought it.
And that purchase happened in 2012, well before Cambridge Anylitica broke as a story.
It’s more that people saw no reason to leave, and by the time there were good reasons, Instagram was too large and established to easily dump for most people.
I think it has a lot to do with Instagram esthetics and (under-the-radar-proposed) user behaviour.
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You are encouraged through suggested posts on insta to make everything about you look perfect, so your ig becomes in a sense your own advertisment. That is not so much on FB. FB was always life as it is.
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Instagram users are somehow not encouraged to post comments that much, rather to like, which reduces the likelihood of anyone ruining that image of yourself you are creating. Again, this is different on FB.
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Also, there are no groups, no communities on Insta, so users cannot connect in the same way like on FB, so there is no negative political or other association to it.
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Lastly, if you think about it, Mark always was and by this day remained the face of Facebook and Facebook only. Rarely anyone ever mentions he is also behind ig. And we know people - they tend not to think about stuff which aren’t mentioned.
For the record, I deleted both at the same time 2 years ago. WA I still have but prefer Telegram. Wish I could ditch WA as well. Telegram is far more advanced.
Yea, I wish I could delete WhatsApp. But everyone and their cat has WA so I’m planning to get another phone just for QA and other info harvesting application social medias.
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I think people underestimate the scale of surveillance/tracking. People lump it in with “oh it’s just advertising”, similar to all the commercials you watch on tv. But it’s a completely different beast. Personally my eureka moment was when I set up a pi-hole and saw the staggering amount of creepy tracking on my devices.
Pi-hole? Pardon my ignorance but could you elaborate?
It’s a network level ad-blocker by blocking at the DNS level.
It was originally meant to run on a raspberry pi, but will run in docker or other Linux os as well. Very light weight and a great self-host project. Been running for years and support via patreon.
Awesome! Didn’t even know of its existence until now. Thanks for the heads up!
I’ll add that you can buy a $30 used “thin client” pc via eBay and set up Ubuntu server (or your choice of Linux distro) then set up pi-hole on it. Cheap project, lots of value
My younger sisters (22and 23) have never had a Facebook account but are into Instagram and Snapchat. To some degree an age difference is at play. I’m 30 and it’s crazy how differently we’re involved with the internet.
I’m no longer on FB but still use Instagram because their use cases and the type of content being shared are completely different, I don’t share anything there I don’t care about the discovery page or reels I’m only there for the few stories and posts that the people I’m following posts basically I’m using it for what it was built for in the 1st place it is great at it it no longer feels like I’m wasting my time on it and this is partially thanks to Aeroinsta blocking all the ads and trackers
Who still uses this shit. People bitch about zuck and musk while riding their dicks using Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to complain.
TLDR: It doesn’t matter who makes the platform, rather what the platform is like. Insta isn’t great but it’s so much better than FB.
I use Instagram a little bit. I’ve ditched Facebook a very long time ago, at least 7 years if not more. Whether or not it’s from Meta never made a difference.
Things were different when I joined Insta, it was a passable way to find art and collect images and follow artists. I was never a fan, but considering I had to abandon DeviantArt (similar story to Reddit) Insta was the next best option available back then. Artstation was too CG and just getting started.
So yes, the reason I keep using it is because there isn’t really anything better when it comes to finding visual art in a broad variety of media. It’s a shit app, it has too much of things I don’t care about, but it is less stupid than FB so it gets a pass.
If there was a solid artist focused platform available today, that would let you follow art and artists of absolutely any media/genre, collect images and communicate etc, I’d jump in a heartbeat. I’d still keep insta solely for the chat, as over the years it became the only communication channel I have with some people.
