Instagram is making changes to remove a feature that users have long found annoying, a company official confirmed via social media. Going forward, the social media platform’s feed will no longer automatically refresh when the app is opened after a period of inactivity, allowing users to see the first posts that appear on the screen. This development comes especially after the company confirmed that it was intentionally lowering the quality of Instagram Stories and Reels that get fewer views, reserving computing resources for videos viewed by many users.
No more automatic feed updates on Instagram
During a recent Ask Me Anything (AMA) (via @_blunderchief), Instagram head Adam Mosseri was asked about recent changes to the social media platform that people knew nothing about. The official highlighted that Instagram has done away with what it calls “rug pull” internally, a user interface (UI) feature that automatically refreshes the feed when users visit the app.
Mosseri said the problem arose because the app was trying to load content while displaying recently downloaded posts or videos. The feature was intended to increase user engagement, but all the interesting content that first appeared on the screen moved or disappeared, forcing the user to manually scroll down to see it, something even a company representative admitted was “annoying”.
Fortunately, this will no longer be the case, as changes have been implemented on the social media platform, Mosseri admitted. Instagram now loads content instead of automatically updating the feed, but only when the user scrolls. The newly loaded content is inserted below the posts already visible.
The decision was made at the cost of an “engagement hit” to the platform, but it offers a “much better experience” for the average user.
