A while ago, Meta announced that you could pay to use their platforms to be ad-free and to have them collect less data on you. As I have been very skeptical of Meta’s (and other social apps) business model, which focuses on capturing users attention to view as many ads as possible, I was happy when this was announced. Would it be possible to get an experience that is not as addictive by removing Meta’s incentive to keep you hooked?
Why pay to use Instagram?
My primary motivation was to see whether these paid features could streamline my experience, make it less addictive. But there was a secondary aim as well: I want to encourage Meta and other companies to get away from an attention economy. So I thought if I want that, I need to be part of doing that.
So I subscribed, starting with Instagram which I use the most. I also added Facebook, as that was initially included, even if I these days seldom use Facebook anymore.
The initial days: a seemingly smoother experience
Initially, the changes were immediately noticeable. My feeds were cleaner, and all ads disappeared directly. You are surprised by how much you notice ads once they are gone! It felt nice to escape the relentless push of targeted advertising.
There was however still content from sources that I did not follow directly, such as recommended posts. So it did not become a service for just following the people I wanted, the exploration part of Instagram was still active.
But this was OK at first I thought (but of course, makes you realize there is a line between promoted content and suggested content, that is not very obvious usually).
The shift: more engagement, more addiction
However, as days turned into weeks, I began to notice a shift. The very features I was hoping where designed to enhance my experience began to morph into a double-edged sword. The absence of ads meant that I was served even more organic, and suggested, content—content that was highly addictive. I realized what had actually made it possible to get “bored” of Instagram were the ads, which just are not as engaging as organic content. But now, with these gone, the app became super addictive instead.
This was the complete opposite of my aim. My goal was to get an app experience that was not about having me hooked on reels and content I did not actually subscribe to; instead, it became a never-ending feed.
So after a couple of month, I really become too addicted and too stuck on the phone with the instagram app. So I felt I needed to do something, which in my case was uninstalling the app, and canceling the subscriptions (as no real point giving money to Meta if I do not use the service).
Possible to be without these services?
Facebook I have not been activly using for the last couple of years, so that was no big difference (the app was already not installed). But Instagram I had had the app for a long time.
The solution of deleting the app means I still check Instagram occasionally, on the web or mobile web. But thankfully that experience is so much worse so that it is really easy to not stay there. So that works quite fine. The biggest difference is that you cannot re-share content easily, and if you upload a story you cannot tag or have the same freedom to choose fonts etc. So it is a lot worse for posting as well. But for once a week checking if you missed something in your social surrounding it works fine.
So now my life is a lot freer.
Another solution would be to not have my personal login, only business login on instagram on the app. That would work, and having the business logins active is not very addictive, and they would have ads either way. But as I am not managing the Instagram at any of the companies I am involved at the moment (I have before been at Mindpark, and at Contentor as well). But that would otherwise be an option.