You open the door Instagram on your smartphone and immediately see an intriguing video on your feed. Suddenly, before you can even dive into the clip, the feed refreshes and the video is gone.
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It seems like something like that would be a mistake, right?
Apparently Instagram did this on purpose. But it was really annoying for users, so now they did it stopped It.
Instagram appreciates the “carpet pulling”
In one video In his Instagram Stories, Instagram head Adam Mosseri was asked to share a recent change to Instagram that “people may not know about yet.”
Mosseri said Instagram removed what was known internally at the company as the “back pull.” Mosseri defined the ‘back pull’ as when users open the Instagram app and see content, but it immediately disappears and is pushed down the feed as new content is brought in.
Mashable speed of light
Shockingly, Mosseri said this practice was done on purpose in Meta’s app. According to Mosseri, Instagram decided to show this content because it was already loaded into the app and gave users something to see while the app downloaded new content from when the user last opened Instagram on their device.
“It was generally good for engagement,” Mosseri said, before admitting it was “really annoying.”
So because it was annoying, Instagram decided to do away with it.
It should be noted that Instagram is far from the only app that does this. Personally, I’ve complained about the way Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, shows content in the For You feed that immediately disappears shortly after opening the app on a user’s smartphone. At first I assumed this was a glitch, just like what I thought was happening on Instagram. But now it seems that some social media companies are okay with giving their users a lesser experience if it means hitting their engagement metrics.
We hope this practice stops across the board on all social media platforms.
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