Instagram Working on 'You're All Caught Up' Feature to Let You Know When All New Posts Have Been Viewed

OR... they could just put it back in chronological order (or even have a switch for that purpose).

But then again, why would any corporation want to listen to user feedback. I mean- NOBODY wants chronological order, right? o_O

As MacGuy rightly suggests ...

Why would they just not reinstate a chronological feed for those of use that want it? Just a tick box to let us have a little more control.

Because Instagram/Facebook has data that shows that isn't good for users. The average Facebook user would have more than 1500 posts in their feed a day (and that was 3 years ago). No one can look at that much. What's why they have to surface the best posts using an algorithm.

They have piles of data showing that giving people a chronological feed, even when they think they want it, actually causes them to engage LESS. They get burnt out by 1000 posts by the same 2 people and don't bother to look at as much, don't engage as much, and don't come back as often. As much as you think you want that, the data proves you're wrong.

The data also shows that people are engaging more with the current setup. Despite what you believe, everything shows people like the current setup more than the old and giving them the option of the old one has no benefit for these social networks.

Just give us the option for chronological order. Hell even Facebook has the option for "most recent" :mad:

Bingo. Seems like they are solving the problem by coming up with various semi-related workarounds while avoiding the actual solution of providing that simple option.

As MacGuy rightly suggests ...

Why would they just not reinstate a chronological feed for those of use that want it? Just a tick box to let us have a little more control.

This feature is the materialization of the FOMO syndrome. The urge to "catch up" with every single post on your social media feed is a bit insane.

Because Instagram/Facebook has data that shows that isn't good for users. The average Facebook user would have more than 1500 posts in their feed a day (and that was 3 years ago). No one can look at that much. What's why they have to surface the best posts using an algorithm.

They have piles of data showing that giving people a chronological feed, even when they think they want it, actually causes them to engage LESS. They get burnt out by 1000 posts by the same 2 people and don't bother to look at as much, don't engage as much, and don't come back as often. As much as you think you want that, the data proves you're wrong.

The data also shows that people are engaging more with the current setup. Despite what you believe, everything shows people like the current setup more than the old and giving them the option of the old one has no benefit for these social networks.

I, for one, am very very tired of tech companies (and their apologists) telling me what's good for me. I think a lot of us don't give half a crap what the "data shows" and just want to see things in order instead of having another damned algorithm choose for us.

While you're sitting here telling me it's "better for me" to just let the nice machine sort things, I'm looking at 3 day-old posts from the same 10% of the people I follow placed above hour-old posts from others. And I don't buy for a second that this has any purpose but to keep my eyeballs in the app for as long as possible as I scroll and scroll hoping to make some sense of what order they're deigning to show me posts in. Enough.