Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer here
Speaker 1: at hell Stuff Works in a love all things tech.
Speaker 1: And in that last episode about the birth of Instagram,
Speaker 1: I described how Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger built the
Speaker 1: app by paring down an earlier idea for a related app.
Speaker 1: I left off right around two thousand twelve, after the
Speaker 1: company had a successful second round of funding for seven
Speaker 1: million dollars in early and saw its number of users
Speaker 1: steadily increase, even though the app was only available for
Speaker 1: iOS at the time. By the end of two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: celebrities were in on the game, with folks like Justin
Speaker 1: Bieber giving the service a huge boost by making their
Speaker 1: own accounts and sharing their photos with their baby Baby Baby.
Speaker 1: In January two thousand and twelve, Instagram made another higher.
Speaker 1: Philip McAllister joined the company as an engineer. He had
Speaker 1: previously worked for go Wala, which was a location based
Speaker 1: social network that got gobbled up by Facebook. And March
Speaker 1: two more employees joined the company. They were Ryan Gamba,
Speaker 1: a developer who had founded a business called app That,
Speaker 1: and Bailey Richardson, a Stanford graduate and community manager who
Speaker 1: had previously worked for you Gallery. I mentioned these hires
Speaker 1: only to point out that Instagram at this phase was
Speaker 1: still a very small company, despite having a massive installed base.
Speaker 1: So you had millions of people using the app, but
Speaker 1: less than a dozen people actually working for the company,
Speaker 1: and that base got larger in early April of twelve,
Speaker 1: when Instagram finally launched on Android, you needed a device
Speaker 1: that was capable of running at least Android two point two,
Speaker 1: also known as Froyo. It taken about a year and
Speaker 1: a half to bring the app over to Google's mobile
Speaker 1: operating system, and clearly Android users were eager for that app.
Speaker 1: More than a million people downloaded the app in the
Speaker 1: first twenty four hours. Instagram would hit fifty million active
Speaker 1: users in early April, which was a huge jump since
Speaker 1: it had only hit ten million the previous September. It's
Speaker 1: meteoric rise helped the company hold a successful funding round,
Speaker 1: raising fifty million dollars in investments in the process, which
Speaker 1: means that's a dollar per active user, which is pretty
Speaker 1: darn good, and it put the valuation of the company
Speaker 1: at about five hundred million dollars. Investors included Sequoya Capital,
Speaker 1: Thrive Capital, Benchmark, and Graylock. And then almost immediately after
Speaker 1: that happened came the big news. Facebook had come knocking
Speaker 1: and System answered the door. The news broke that Facebook
Speaker 1: would acquire Instagram for the princely sum of one billion
Speaker 1: dollars in a combination cash and stock deal. The timing
Speaker 1: of both the funding round and the acquisition announcement meant
Speaker 1: that it was very likely Instagram was in talks with
Speaker 1: both groups at the same time. So what the heck
Speaker 1: was going on here? Well, chances are Sistrom and company.
Speaker 1: We're using the investment round as two things, a negotiation
Speaker 1: tactic and a safety net. The fact that investors were
Speaker 1: rushing to put more money into Instagram heightened the company's value,
Speaker 1: which gave Instagram a better position when Facebook was looking
Speaker 1: to acquire the company. Instagram could point at its recent
Speaker 1: funding round as evidence of the company's worth and thus
Speaker 1: demand a higher acquisition price, and the companies that had
Speaker 1: just invested stood to see a return on those investment.
Speaker 1: It's practically overnight if you and poured fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: into a company and then that company sold for a
Speaker 1: billion dollars, you would stand to receive a really tidy
Speaker 1: profit on your investment. And worst case scenario, if the
Speaker 1: deal broke down and Facebook walked away, you still have
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars of investment money to work with. At
Speaker 1: the time of its acquisition, Kevin's Systram owned about forty
Speaker 1: percent of the company, Mike Kreeger owned about ten percent,
Speaker 1: and the rest was owned by their various investors. The
Speaker 1: one billion dollar deal made them both multimillionaires overnight, at
Speaker 1: least on paper, they were multimillionaires, with Systram being worth
Speaker 1: about four million dollars, and there were just thirteen employees
Speaker 1: at Instagram at the time of the acquisition, and that
Speaker 1: includes the two founders, So it was a phenomenal deal. However,
Speaker 1: that would not stop people from later saying Instagram made
Speaker 1: the move too quickly. Now, before I get into that analysis,
Speaker 1: win did Facebook one Instagram in the first place? Well,
Speaker 1: for one thing, Facebook was heading toward its own initial
Speaker 1: public offering or i p O. That's when a company
Speaker 1: switches from being a privately held corporation into a publicly
Speaker 1: traded one where you can end up trading stocks on
Speaker 1: the market. And if an i p O goes well,
Speaker 1: it earns a company a whole lot of cash, So
Speaker 1: they become flush with cash they can suddenly do lots
Speaker 1: of stuff with it, which typically can be used for
Speaker 1: things like building out resources or acquiring other companies. But
Speaker 1: Facebook had already found itself in a great position as
Speaker 1: far as cash goes. Forbes estimated that due to private
Speaker 1: share sales to Golden and Sacks, which happened in advance
Speaker 1: of the i p O, Facebook had about four billion
Speaker 1: dollars burning a hole in its enormous corporate wallet. Making
Speaker 1: a move like buying another company before Facebook had its
Speaker 1: own i p O was a pretty baller move, I guess.
Speaker 1: For another thing, Facebook really wanted to get at Instagram's
Speaker 1: reach with mobile users. Facebook was doing well on desktops
Speaker 1: and laptops, but hatt't managed to be as successful in
Speaker 1: the mobile world, and other entities like Google and Twitter
Speaker 1: were eyeing Instagram to which created a sense of urgency
Speaker 1: and Facebook needed to find ways to make sure it
Speaker 1: would remain relevant as demographics and technology changed. Instagram has
Speaker 1: always skewed younger with its demographics than other social platforms.
Speaker 1: A Facebook as a platform started to age out it
Speaker 1: needed the next big thing to help keep everything moving forward.
Speaker 1: So why did some analysts later say Instagram made a
Speaker 1: big mistake selling to Facebook in April In two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen, Business Insider ran a piece about this very question.
Speaker 1: By that time, Instagram boasted two hundred million users that
Speaker 1: put it on parallel with Twitter, which had already held
Speaker 1: its own I p O and raised two billion dollars
Speaker 1: in the process, reaching a valuation of more than twenty
Speaker 1: billion dollars. And then Facebook went on to purchase the
Speaker 1: messaging service WhatsApp, which was five hundred million users large,
Speaker 1: and that's about two and a half times the size
Speaker 1: of Instagram. But Facebook spent nineteen billion dollars on it
Speaker 1: in the process, so way more than two and a
Speaker 1: half times the amount it's it's spent on Instagram. So
Speaker 1: some analysts have said that Instagram could have held out
Speaker 1: a little longer, continued working under the investment money it
Speaker 1: had raised in that fifty million dollar funding round, and
Speaker 1: watched as its price tag ticked higher and higher. Systrom,
Speaker 1: for his part, says that it is impossible to see
Speaker 1: the future and that playing this game in hindsight is pointless. Rather,
Speaker 1: he said, the acquisition enabled his team to work on
Speaker 1: the project that they loved with an enormous amount of support,
Speaker 1: and without that support, they may never hit that two
Speaker 1: hundred million user mark, So it could have just been
Speaker 1: a moot point, a moot question. When the acquisition became
Speaker 1: public knowledge, Systrom and Zuckerberg both reassured people that Instagram
Speaker 1: would continue as its own entity and not be swallowed
Speaker 1: up into Facebook, incorporated into Facebook's features, and then later disappear,
Speaker 1: And so far that has been the case. While Instagram
Speaker 1: employees celebrate their windfall, the company continued to roll out features,
Speaker 1: build a larger audience, and generally stay on target until
Speaker 1: late when a corporate decision would backfire hard on Instagram
Speaker 1: and cause the company to backpedal a bit. So what happened, Well,
Speaker 1: it all had to do with those pesky terms of
Speaker 1: service that we all agree to but almost none of
Speaker 1: us ever bother to actually read. I'll explain more in
Speaker 1: just a moment, but first let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. In December, Instagram updated its terms
Speaker 1: of service with the intent for the new policies to
Speaker 1: take effects starting January. Among those updates was a sentence
Speaker 1: that caused a bit of a ruckus, and the sentence
Speaker 1: read quote, you agree that a business may pay Instagram
Speaker 1: to display your photos in connection with paid or sponsored
Speaker 1: content or promotions without any compensation to you end quote,
Speaker 1: not first blush. That seems to say that if you
Speaker 1: agree to use Instagram, any or all of your photos
Speaker 1: could be featured in commercials for products you never use
Speaker 1: or you've never heard of, or you oppose morally. And
Speaker 1: what's more, you would never see a dime in compensation,
Speaker 1: whether you liked the product or not. The advertisers would
Speaker 1: get the wealth of countless photographs uploaded to Instagram by
Speaker 1: millions of users without having to pay anyone other than
Speaker 1: Instagram for that privilege. Outrage followed, But what was really
Speaker 1: going on? Well, as it turns out, the terms of
Speaker 1: service were actually restricting what Instagram could do. Earlier language
Speaker 1: was more vague and permissive. But we need to understand
Speaker 1: a few truths. One of those truths is that companies
Speaker 1: that display user content require a lot of protection to
Speaker 1: make sure they can't be held liable if someone says, hey,
Speaker 1: I didn't want you to share that. The terms of
Speaker 1: service give broad licenses to such companies. To display images,
Speaker 1: because that's what the companies do. Instagram displays the photos
Speaker 1: you upload and they store them as well, So in
Speaker 1: order for that to happen, Instagram has to have permission
Speaker 1: from you to do that because the photos don't belong
Speaker 1: to Instagram. Those are your photos. Presumably you're presumably uploading
Speaker 1: your own and not someone else's work, and so to
Speaker 1: be able to display those images and to store them
Speaker 1: on servers, Instagram requires users permission to do so. Instagram
Speaker 1: can't sell your photos to anyone else because the service
Speaker 1: doesn't own your photos. I can't sell something that doesn't
Speaker 1: belong to me, at least not legally. Nor can Instagram
Speaker 1: change your photos beyond the ways you've indicated. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, you can use Instagram's tools to change your photos.
Speaker 1: But once you do that and you've settled on what
Speaker 1: the photo needs to look like, Instagram doesn't have permission
Speaker 1: to change it. Again, it doesn't have a license to
Speaker 1: create derivative works based off of the images you upload.
Speaker 1: There are similar terms of service elsewhere online, such as
Speaker 1: with Google Drive. Without those terms, someone might try to
Speaker 1: bring a case against a company saying, hey, I only
Speaker 1: authorize this company to show me my material on this
Speaker 1: particular device, nothing more. So some of this is in
Speaker 1: the interest of self protection, but that didn't mean that
Speaker 1: Instagram didn't have some wording that concerned poll For example,
Speaker 1: there was this passage quote to help us deliver interesting,
Speaker 1: paid or sponsored content or promotions. You agree that a
Speaker 1: business or other entity may pay us to display your
Speaker 1: user name, likeness, photos, along with any associated meta data,
Speaker 1: and or actions you take in connection with paid or
Speaker 1: sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you. End quote.
Speaker 1: But the wording stated that Instagram could be paid to
Speaker 1: allow advertisers to display your content in connection with advertising. Now,
Speaker 1: as The Verge pointed out in an insightful article on
Speaker 1: the subject back in two thousand twelve, this actually created
Speaker 1: limitations for Instagram and advertisers. A sponsor would not be
Speaker 1: allowed to alter a photo in any way. It would
Speaker 1: be able to display a photo in connection with advertising,
Speaker 1: but couldn't turn the photo itself into an ad. So
Speaker 1: if you took a picture of a perfect day on
Speaker 1: a seashore, a nearby resort would not be allowed to
Speaker 1: display that photo with overlaid text all about the resort.
Speaker 1: The Verge piece goes on to point out that Facebook
Speaker 1: already did something akin to this. If you were to
Speaker 1: like a page on Facebook that was run by a
Speaker 1: brand that like could show up in friends news feeds
Speaker 1: as a sponsored post. So if I liked the podcast
Speaker 1: page for the soundtrack show, which I recently did do
Speaker 1: the podcast, could pay Facebook to promote that action across
Speaker 1: my friends news feeds, and they would see Jonathan liked
Speaker 1: this page, and that spreads the word and perhaps even
Speaker 1: inspires my friends to also like that page. The Verge
Speaker 1: argued that Instagram didn't make a mistake with the way
Speaker 1: it formulated its terms of service, but rather made a
Speaker 1: huge mistake by not explaining those terms clearly in advance
Speaker 1: so that people wouldn't have a freak count. Instead, users
Speaker 1: got the opression that all their pictures of vacations, pets,
Speaker 1: and let's face it, food were to become the ads
Speaker 1: of tomorrow, and while the users were the ones generating
Speaker 1: all the content, they wouldn't get paid for it. The
Speaker 1: reaction was, to put it, lightly negative. Systrom issued a
Speaker 1: statement apologizing for the communication and the misunderstanding, but at
Speaker 1: that point the outrage was spiraling out of control, and
Speaker 1: so Instagram chose to roll back. The language. Just a
Speaker 1: little bit later, in December of two thousand twelve, still
Speaker 1: a month before the policies were even supposed to take effect,
Speaker 1: the terms of service essentially reverted back to what they
Speaker 1: were when Instagram first launched, back in which, as the
Speaker 1: Verge piece pointed out, actually meant that there were fewer
Speaker 1: protections in place for users, so it ironically got worse,
Speaker 1: not better. Another piece, also in The Verge, went so
Speaker 1: far as to suggest that the whole debacle would feed
Speaker 1: into a culture of deceit among companies, that instagrams ex
Speaker 1: arians would encourage other companies to develop terms of service
Speaker 1: that would be difficult to suss out. They wouldn't be
Speaker 1: written in plain language in order that people didn't get
Speaker 1: bent out of shape from the outset, And as the
Speaker 1: piece pointed out, Instagram's updated policy put their strategy in
Speaker 1: plain language. It made it easier to understand, and that's
Speaker 1: what set people off. When the terms were more obtuse.
Speaker 1: No one got upset because no one took the effort
Speaker 1: to understand what the heck the terms meant in the
Speaker 1: first place. But once you spell it out, everyone got
Speaker 1: up in arms about it, even though nothing had really changed.
Speaker 1: That dramatically. Whether Instagram's experience has had an overall negative
Speaker 1: impact on the way companies create their terms of services
Speaker 1: difficult to say, but Instagram did have its first real
Speaker 1: blush with user blowback, and at first some analysts claimed
Speaker 1: the move had a real impact on user behavior. There
Speaker 1: was a company called app Data, which measured Instagram usage
Speaker 1: through users who had linked their Instagram accounts to their
Speaker 1: Facebook profile. Else They reported that the app had seen
Speaker 1: a twenty decline and daily activity over the week that
Speaker 1: followed the policy announcements and rollback, but a later statement
Speaker 1: from app Data cleared things up. According to a representative,
Speaker 1: the report was based on inaccurate information and was far
Speaker 1: more likely to be connected to the fact that the
Speaker 1: week in question included Christmas and people were just not
Speaker 1: posting as much that day because they were enjoying a holiday,
Speaker 1: and that there probably wasn't any direct connection to the
Speaker 1: policy controversy. Now, while the policy issue was a blip
Speaker 1: in the radar, Instagram was able to get back on track.
Speaker 1: By February of the service boasted one hundred million monthly
Speaker 1: active users, and while some were starting to whisper that
Speaker 1: Systram had sold too quickly. System continue to argue that
Speaker 1: without the support of Facebook, the service wouldn't have grown
Speaker 1: that quickly. To start with, Now, I've got a little
Speaker 1: bit more to say about where Instagram is today and
Speaker 1: how it got there, But first let's take another quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. In two thousand thirteen, Instagram
Speaker 1: introduced a few new features. One was photo tagging. Now
Speaker 1: people could tag one another in photos, and it made
Speaker 1: it much easier to find photos of yourself with the
Speaker 1: inclusion of a photos of you tab. That tab displayed
Speaker 1: all the pictures of a user that other people had
Speaker 1: uploaded and tagged. Pretty useful when you go to a
Speaker 1: lot of events and parties with friends and then you
Speaker 1: want to see how many pictures of you looking like
Speaker 1: an idiot there are out there. I might be projecting
Speaker 1: a little bit. I'm not suggesting that you look like
Speaker 1: an idiot at parties. I'm admitting that I always do
Speaker 1: look like an idiot at parties. In June, Instagram introduced
Speaker 1: video sharing. This seemed to be a response to another
Speaker 1: popular product that had launched the year before. This one
Speaker 1: was called vine. Vine would allow users to create video
Speaker 1: loops that lasted just six seconds and then upload those
Speaker 1: clips to sites like Twitter, which bought Vine just before
Speaker 1: it launched officially. The short form challenged users to find
Speaker 1: creative ways to leverage that format. Instagram's approach was similar,
Speaker 1: only it was nearly three times longer, with clips lasting
Speaker 1: up to fifteen seconds. Instagram also introduced more than a
Speaker 1: dozen special filters specifically designed to work with video. This
Speaker 1: marked the first really big change to Instagram's features since
Speaker 1: it launched, though the team behind Instagram had been working
Speaker 1: the whole time to improve services speed and reliability, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't like they were shirking their duty. They just
Speaker 1: hadn't really added any big features. It also meant some
Speaker 1: people began to worry that Instagram could become Facebook's prototype
Speaker 1: ground for features that Facebook wanted to explore but couldn't
Speaker 1: easily implement into the Facebook experience directly. Instead, you just
Speaker 1: add more stuff to Instagram. Ironically, this would mean pushing
Speaker 1: Instagram closer to its predecessor, the app known as Bourbon
Speaker 1: bu r b N. Also, Facebook had really wanted to
Speaker 1: buy Vine that didn't work out for them, This would
Speaker 1: become an ongoing thing for Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg would want
Speaker 1: to go out and acquire a company, he would get
Speaker 1: a negative reply, and then he would tell Instagram, hey,
Speaker 1: can you make a tool that essentially does this thing
Speaker 1: that we wanted to buy and they'd say okay. In October,
Speaker 1: Instagram encountered another controversy. This one was one that continued
Speaker 1: for a while. A photographer and model named Petra Collins
Speaker 1: posted a photo of herself in a bikini, and in
Speaker 1: the photo, some of Collins's pubic hair was actually visible
Speaker 1: beneath her bikini bottom. Instagram ended up deleting her account,
Speaker 1: which led to Collins protesting the move, claiming her photo
Speaker 1: didn't violate any of Instagram's stated terms and conditions, and
Speaker 1: that led to a wider discussion about Instagram's policies and
Speaker 1: the seemingly inconsistent way the company enforced them. You could
Speaker 1: argue that some photos, while not technically showing any nudity whatsoever,
Speaker 1: we're incredibly suggestive or sexual in nature, and therefore we're
Speaker 1: a quote unquote fine by Instagram standards. Other photos that
Speaker 1: might include a little nudity, but we're not overtly sexual
Speaker 1: or sensual, might end up being violations of Instagram's policies.
Speaker 1: And there were other issues about a disparity between photos
Speaker 1: of men and women, and this all started to spiral
Speaker 1: into a big debate online that continues to this day.
Speaker 1: It's been an ongoing issue for Instagram. There were similar
Speaker 1: incidents that happened in and there's still arguments about whether
Speaker 1: or not the policies make sense, whether they are enforced equitably,
Speaker 1: and whether it's a different story for men than it
Speaker 1: is for women. Yet another controversy popped up in November,
Speaker 1: which must have been a pretty rough year to work
Speaker 1: in pr and Instagram. A b b See investigative report
Speaker 1: revealed that people were selling illegal drugs using Instagram to
Speaker 1: advertise their products, typically with a message that would send
Speaker 1: people to the WhatsApp messenger in order to complete the transaction.
Speaker 1: Instagram responded by cracking down no pun intended on the
Speaker 1: various hashtags being used by people to sell drugs over
Speaker 1: the service. Also in two thousand thirteen, Instagram introduced sponsored posts,
Speaker 1: which would insert advertisements within the feeds of users as
Speaker 1: a way to monetize the service, and the company also
Speaker 1: introduced a feature called direct in which users could choose
Speaker 1: to send photos to specific people as a private message,
Speaker 1: rather than sharing it in their public feed. This last
Speaker 1: feature seemed to be a response to apps like Snapchat,
Speaker 1: which was growing in popularity at that time. Two thousand
Speaker 1: thirteen was also the year Instagram finally came to the
Speaker 1: Windows phone platform. Nakia had been pressuring Instagram for a
Speaker 1: version of its app to run on Windows Mobile operating system.
Speaker 1: Nakia's handset division was in the process of being acquired
Speaker 1: by Microsoft by the time the app was on the
Speaker 1: verge of launching. The app came out in November, and
Speaker 1: immediately there were problems. For example, in the beta build,
Speaker 1: you could not take photos directly from the app. Instead,
Speaker 1: you would take photos with your phones camera app, then
Speaker 1: you would import the photos from your film role into Instagram. Worse,
Speaker 1: the original announcement mentioned video support, but the Windows Mobile
Speaker 1: version of Instagram had no such capability. In fact, it
Speaker 1: would take nearly two and a half years before Instagram
Speaker 1: on Windows ten Mobile could support video. There have been
Speaker 1: some standalone apps that interoperate with Instagram that officially come
Speaker 1: from Instagram the company. In fourteen, the company launched a
Speaker 1: messaging app called Bolt, in which users could send an
Speaker 1: image to other users that disappears after it's been viewed,
Speaker 1: similar to snapchats design. Later, the company also released hyper Laps,
Speaker 1: a time lapse video app. In two thousand and fifteen,
Speaker 1: Instagram launched a companion app called Boomerang. Boomerang allows users
Speaker 1: to take a burst of five photos within the span
Speaker 1: of a second. The photos are then shown in sequence
Speaker 1: as if they are five frames of a video. Then
Speaker 1: the sequence reverses back to the beginning and so on
Speaker 1: in a never ending loop, and it can be funny
Speaker 1: or irritating, all depending on the execution. In s, Instagram
Speaker 1: introduced Stories, which lets you create a series of photos
Speaker 1: and videos, complete with layers and effects, and string them
Speaker 1: together to form into a narrative. The story expires after
Speaker 1: twenty four hours it disappears from feeds at that point.
Speaker 1: In April, Instagram changed up its algorithm in a way
Speaker 1: that still drives me crazy, kind of the way Facebook's
Speaker 1: algorithm drives me crazy. And maybe this is just me.
Speaker 1: I know it's not just me, because there's so many
Speaker 1: articles about it, but maybe it doesn't bother you. But
Speaker 1: the app changed from listing entries in reverse chronological order.
Speaker 1: That would be where you have the most recent posts
Speaker 1: at the top of your feed and older posts are
Speaker 1: following behind, so you just scroll down and you're seeing
Speaker 1: the older posts. Instead, they use a new algorithm in
Speaker 1: order to show the posts in a way that was
Speaker 1: supposed to be the kind that would show you more
Speaker 1: of the type of stuff you really liked at the top.
Speaker 1: Presumably the algorithm would take into account the people and
Speaker 1: hashtags of photos that you had hit like on in
Speaker 1: the past and use that to determine what would rise
Speaker 1: to the top of your feed, so that you would
Speaker 1: not miss out on those things, which I guess makes
Speaker 1: some sort of sense, except it really cuts down on
Speaker 1: discover ability. I much prefer the chronological approach, which I
Speaker 1: think works better as long as you're not following thousands
Speaker 1: of accounts. If you are following thousands of accounts, then
Speaker 1: clearly you need some help to see the stuff that
Speaker 1: you would most likely enjoy away. But if you're like
Speaker 1: me and you're following maybe a couple hundred of accounts,
Speaker 1: then chronological makes perfect sense. That same year, the company
Speaker 1: faced more controversy when The Daily Star reported that it
Speaker 1: had discovered users were uploading pornography to Instagram and hiding
Speaker 1: it through Arabic hashtags and another awful moment came when
Speaker 1: Olivia Salon um, the senior technology reporter for the U
Speaker 1: S branch of The Guardian, posted a screenshot of an
Speaker 1: email she had received, and that email included death and
Speaker 1: rape threats against her. That part is awful enough, but
Speaker 1: the truly terrible part for this story was that the
Speaker 1: post got a lot of engagement, and Instagram's add algorithm
Speaker 1: plucked the picture out for use in an advertisement, which
Speaker 1: appeared on Solon's sisters feed, which is pretty horrifying to
Speaker 1: see an email addressed to your sister appearing as a
Speaker 1: sponsored post in your feed. The purpose behind the agorithm
Speaker 1: was to help encourage engagement, so if a post was
Speaker 1: doing well, it's supposed to get featured on your friends
Speaker 1: feeds so that they don't miss out. But in this case,
Speaker 1: it seemed as if Instagram was promoting the awful threats
Speaker 1: against Ms Salon, a very upsetting situation. Also full disclosure,
Speaker 1: I should say this. I can't say that I know
Speaker 1: Olivia Salon, but she and I have interacted online a
Speaker 1: few times, so I admit I'm not unbiased in this
Speaker 1: particular story, though I would imagine I'd be horrified even
Speaker 1: if I had never communicated with her, but that particular
Speaker 1: problem is indicative of the sort of things that can
Speaker 1: happen with algorithms without very careful supervision. And algorithm is
Speaker 1: just a set of instructions, and if a situation seems
Speaker 1: to fall within those parameters, the algorithm will act upon it.
Speaker 1: It's not indicative of anything malicious necessarily, but certainly falls
Speaker 1: in the problematic or perhaps even negligent categories. And leading
Speaker 1: up to the recording of these episodes, some more news
Speaker 1: about Instagram recently came out. One feature that has yet
Speaker 1: to be implemented as of the time I'm recording this,
Speaker 1: but should soon be part of the service is a
Speaker 1: mute button, which will let you silence friends without actually
Speaker 1: on following them, so you can see who is bugging
Speaker 1: you and then you can mute that person. You you
Speaker 1: would stop seeing photos of my dog Tibolt without having
Speaker 1: to let me know you've unfollowed me. Though, let's be honest,
Speaker 1: Tibblet is so darn cute he deserves his own Instagram account.
Speaker 1: He's just so darn cute. Instagram is also introducing a
Speaker 1: feature to let you know when you've seen all the
Speaker 1: latest posts from the past given amount of time, which
Speaker 1: would save you the effort of scrolling beyond images you've
Speaker 1: seen multiple times in the hopes of glimpsing something new. Now,
Speaker 1: this would not be necessary if the app, I don't know,
Speaker 1: listed images and reverse chronological order or something, but it
Speaker 1: lets you know you've hit the last of the new
Speaker 1: stuff and that scrolling further will just show you more
Speaker 1: of what you've already seen. So you start scrolling down
Speaker 1: and eventually you see a message saying you have seen
Speaker 1: all the latest posts from the last six hours. Let's
Speaker 1: say I'm just arbitrarily making up that time, but you
Speaker 1: get the idea, and that way you know, all right, well,
Speaker 1: that's how many were there for the last six hours.
Speaker 1: I'll check again in a couple of hours and it
Speaker 1: will tell me when I get to that same spot
Speaker 1: and say, oh, you've seen the latest ones from the
Speaker 1: last two hours. And you can keep doing it that
Speaker 1: way without having to dig way back in your Instagram
Speaker 1: feed again. Wouldn't be necessary if it were in reverse
Speaker 1: chronological order. But I'm beating a dead horse. And another
Speaker 1: thing that the app is launching is a native payments feature,
Speaker 1: so you will soon be able to if you if
Speaker 1: you can already. You soon will be able to register
Speaker 1: a credit or debit card in a profile. You would
Speaker 1: then set up a security pen personal identification number, and
Speaker 1: then you can buy stuff through Instagram. You might be
Speaker 1: able to do things like make dinner reservations or book
Speaker 1: a session in a sheep salon. You may soon be
Speaker 1: able to buy things advertise on Instagram directly through the app,
Speaker 1: removing the necessity of navigating away from Instagram to buy
Speaker 1: those killer shade you saw or whatever. Now again, will
Speaker 1: these features make Instagram ever more popular? Or are we
Speaker 1: starting to see that feature creep problem up here, where
Speaker 1: more and more things that were never part of Instagram's
Speaker 1: uh makeup back in the old days start getting crammed
Speaker 1: in there. Are we going to see Instagram become bourbon
Speaker 1: the old proto Instagram app from And if it does,
Speaker 1: will users still enjoy using Instagram or will they say
Speaker 1: there's so many features here that it's cluttered and it's clumsy,
Speaker 1: it's not fun to use. I much prefer a streamlined app,
Speaker 1: and they'll go looking for something else. It's too early
Speaker 1: to say for sure. I know that I tend to
Speaker 1: think that it would be best to keep things as
Speaker 1: streamlined as possible, and perhaps develop partner apps that have
Speaker 1: these other features that are starting to creep into Instagram
Speaker 1: and then go that route instead of putting them all
Speaker 1: in one. But who am I to say? I'm not
Speaker 1: worth four million dollars, so I certainly can't argue that
Speaker 1: I have all the answers. I'm curious what you guys think,
Speaker 1: and also if you have any suggestions for future episodes,
Speaker 1: you should write me your thoughts. The email address is
Speaker 1: tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you
Speaker 1: can drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter to
Speaker 1: handle it. Both of those is tech Stuff hs W
Speaker 1: or also, hey, follow us on Instagram. I've been talking
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