Oh Instagram...

Instagram has been in the news lately, and it's a bit concerning.

At one time, Instagram was dedicated to just photo sharing. Just snap a picture on your phone and use the Instagram app to add a filter, add a description and tags, and post. That's all it was.

But I never got to experience that myself. When I joined the social site in the latter half of 2019, they were already experimenting with short video uploads, and later testing out a tab called IGTV where you could upload long form videos like YouTube. I never really paid attention to those features as I merely focused on posting interesting photos I took, and later on, uploading my first art posts there in October 2020.

For that first year, everything seemed great with my artwork attracting new followers, which encouraged me to keep working on my art and I have improved a lot since then. But alas, things change, and in the last few months, Instagram has been introducing questionable new features that appear to favor videos over photos or artwork.

First off, the "Reels". It's Instagram's rebranded video feature that is designed to compete with TikTok, and the phone app does it's best to push reels from your followers or via suggested posts. And Instagram is pushing creators to make Reels instead of simple pictures or artwork posts. There is speculation that if you don't post Reels often, your non-video posts will become less and less visible to your followers. I have evidence of that happening. This past Spring, I posted a Reel which was a simple video of a blooming spring bush in a nearby park, lasting about a minute. That minute long video received the most likes of anything I have posted to Instagram so far, 90 likes in total, from users I don't follow. That shows the video spread around a little bit, while my art posts from around that same time only got 5 to 6 likes in total, mostly from my followers. While Reels may be good for a once-in-a-while post, I can't make Reels every single day. I have interests and hobbies outside of artwork, not to mention a day job. Artists simply may not have the extra time to constantly post videos to remain on the algorithm's good side. And because they aren't making reels, engagement is sinking as their non-video posts are being hidden from their followers. There are times I manually go to an artists Instagram page and seeing posts they have made that never made it to my feed, because...

Suggested posts, the second thing that Instagram is pushing. It's simple. Instagram has started placing suggested posts into your main feed, based on what kinds of Instagram content you have liked or the types of people you follow. On my phone, the suggested posts range from other artists promoting their work, the books they helped illustrate, web comics, or indie book stores. If not any of those, Instagram grids with cute raccoon or squirrel videos are suggested instead. Personally, I don't mind suggested posts as they have helped me find other artists on the platform, and also showing off some rather cute animal videos. Scrolling through my phone just now, I do see posts from people I follow, but perhaps there are slightly more sponsored posts or suggestions. Other Instagram artists are saying the suggested posts just add more clutter to the main feed. They aren't seeing posts from people they follow as often. I don't use Instagram on my phone too much as I upload via my computer, but since I joined in 2019, perhaps I'm just adjusting faster to the new feed? I will say that they should at least tone down the suggestions just a little bit and favor actual posts from people you follow, or put the suggestions on a separate tab. They do so with Reels, so why not suggested posts as well?

The final new feature that has many people legitimately concerned is "Remix". Just a few days ago, Instagram added this Remix feature to their app. What this does is it allows any publicly visible Instagram photos or videos to be used by other Instagram users for "remixing" into their own Reels or photo posts. And this feature is turned on by default. This is a bit concerning for a couple reasons. The first is the fact that any new photos you upload there are essentially up for grabs by the larger Instagram community. You have no idea what those users are going to do with your public photos, artwork, or videos. On one hand, someone who truly appreciates my artwork could make a Remix video featuring my art and pointing their followers to my grid. On the other hand, what if an online troll, a racist individual, or a scammer decides to remix my content for their own nefarious purposes? 

The second concern is copyright. I imagine there will be Instagram users who won't care about the Remix feature if their content is licensed under Creative Commons or is public domain. But for professional photographers or artists who sell their works, Remixing can be a very big problem. Even if the Remix feature does attribute the source of the photos/videos, that won't stop the fact that trolls or scammers could reuse their material without permission. The consequences can be more dire if family photos or personal artwork are brought in to the mix. Meta just opened a proverbial Pandora's Box in regards to copyright and privacy. And they could have avoided doing so with one simple thing...

Make the Remix feature opt-in by default.

No one should be forced to dig into the Instagram settings and go deep into the Privacy screens to turn off the three specific switches for Remixing. They should NOT be on by default. It should be up to the user to decide whether or not they want their content reused by others. Promote the feature in your advertising instead and let the user decide. 

For myself, I have left the remix on since I think you can specify on the upload screen whether or not you want a post to be remixed. For simple nature photos or videos, I am fine with remixing those. For my own artwork, I plan on keeping remixing off for those specific posts since I'm still developing my characters and settings.

That's the way it should have been from the start. But the artist community is starting to speak out against this feature being opt-out rather than opt-in. Hopefully soon, Meta will get the message and will turn this off by default. 

For now, I will explain how to turn this off. Open your Instagram app, and tap on your Profile button in the bottom right. On your profile screen, tap the hamburger menu in the top right, and tap Settings. Tap Privacy. Then tap on Reels and Remix. On that screen there will be three switches, one for allowing reels, videos, and photos to be remixed. If you don't want these turned on, tap each switch until they are off, shown when the switch moves to the left and turns gray.