Instagram Instants - what's the story behind it?

Abhigyan wrote about a new Instagram feature called ‘Instants’ on his blog. It’s some kind of side project from Meta. Here’s how it works:

At first, it looked like an imitation of BeReal; the user interface was just a squircle viewfinder and a button to click a picture. But the concept of Instants is even simpler: 1. Take a picture at any time you want, and as many as you want. 2. It is instantly sent to all your “Friends”, without any extra editing. 3. You can look at other people’s Instants “once”, and either react to them with an emoji or leave a reply. I’ll have you note that “Friends” here is referring to people you follow, that follow you back. I’ve written it in quotes because this is the first time I’ve seen Instagram refer to mutual following as “friendship” on their app. But yeah, there’s still an option to set “Close Friends” like you would on an Instagram story or a note.

Fair enough. Sounds innocent. But it's Meta! Maybe I'm biased, but I don't associate this company with innocence at all. I get the impression that nothing they do is innocent or selfless.And that's how I view this project too. Especially reading these words from Abhigyan:

I’m already starting to get a little bored of it. I have my camera for when I want to take pictures, and I have Instagram Stories for when I want to share something with friends. I don’t really need this minimal option that is trying to get me to post when I could just be looking at the current moment by myself.

Exactly. It's yet another product designed to make us share even more moments of our lives. First, there were photos. People made an effort to capture and post a nice shot. An important or funny moment. Then came videos. Next, Stories copied from Snapchat, just so the competition couldn't get ahead if they couldn't be bought out. Add to that live streams, and so on. Now it's "capturing moments". Unedited. Without a second thought. Something along the lines of: act impulsively and compulsively. Just as often as possible. 'Share every moment. Everything. From everywhere. Always. Give us even more data about yourself. That's how we make our money'.

This's what mainstream social media has become today. Blogs, on the other hand, are not like that. Life on them moves at a slower pace, and you are the one in control of your content. Even if you choose to post every single moment of your life on a blog, you can be sure that no algorithm will try to wrap its tentacles around you and get you hooked.

On a blog, you're the one calling the shots. On an external platform whose goal is to monetise the data you provide, you never know where it might lead.