Comment by kelnos

5 hours ago

> I'm trying to make Instagram be what my parents said Facebook was.

Hell, you're trying to make Instagram be what Instagram used to be. Back in the early (pre-Meta) days, it was just a reverse-chronological feed of the posts from people you followed.

A decent part of why I bailed on Instagram back in 2019 or so was because it had stopped being this for a while (posts reordered, some not even shown, so many ads).

You can still get a chronological feed if you tap the Instagram logo at the top and click "Following"

But you can't turn that mode on as a default, and it essentially kicks you from the normal app hierarchy into a separate barebones screen. I find it's all for naught anyway because my friends have long since stopped making regular posts on Instagram, it's more common to use stories.

  • Didn't know about this and wow, I had missed stuff from real friends because the regular feed hid it.

  • Do Stories show up differently than posts? Asking as someone that has not used Instagram beyond looking at a few specific profiles.

  • Right, you used to be able to do that with Facebook, too (haven't been on there in forever, don't know the current state), but, right, it would reset to the usual slop after a little while.

    This sort of garbage is just yet another reason why I don't want to be on these platforms. "Oh, you prefer it this way? No, fuck you, we know better as to what you want."

    > my friends have long since stopped making regular posts on Instagram, it's more common to use stories.

    Ugh. I don't know what my friends have been doing these days on Instagram, but the last thing I want to spend my day doing is watching short-form video clips posted by my friends. The photo stream (yes, with occasional short videos), was wonderful.