This is very interesting. I'm an art photographer part time and have used IG to share my work. Previously (let's say a couple years ago, maybe less), Any posts I added with specific related tags would at least get some traction (I never paid for followers or ads of any kind) and more recently, they barely do at all. I at first suspected that it was because Instagram decided to take a tedious stance of minimizing post exposure until you forked money over for their paid offerings, but now there's this wider enshittification angle to consider, of garbage saturating other's feeds either because it does pay for publicity or games their idiot algorithmic protocols better.
Instagram have been changing the way algorithm works for a while and they did say they are prioritising reels over photos. The enshittification is real. When I block one "quotes" account, say "_quotes" then posts from "quotes_" appear immediately in my feed. Could it be done on purpose to inflate ad impressions and engagement?
I can only imagine this kind of idiocy eventually hurting the absolute core of success that is engaged users. If people who want to post know that their content will be crowded out even to followers and friends by an avalanche of spam, AI garbage, bullshit clickbait reels and so forth, they'll stop posting, and also maybe stop visiting because they know that they'll be hit by the same flood of crap on their feeds.
A social networking platform with over 1 billion users (though I wonder how many of those a real people organically using the site) has a lot of inertia built into it for apparent forward motion, but if the thing that made it work falls apart, it will rot.
Also, for all the newly polished PR talk you hear from Zuckerberg these days about helping users, shit like the above and many other similar things is worth remembering. As the controlling individual at his company he both absolutely knows about these slides into enshittification, and has the power to change them, but apparently doesn't..
