Instagram finally ends the most vexing side of its content feed

Bryan M. Wolfe / Digital Trends

One of the most infuriating things about opening a social media app is landing on a piece of content, and then the app suddenly deciding to refresh the feed before you are done fully watching it. Instagram is one of those platforms, and so is X.

Well, it seems Instagram has made the course correction and will no longer refresh the feed upon launching the app, unless users physically swipe up or down to scroll past it. The change was confirmed by Instagram chief, Adam Mosseri, in an AMA session.

It was not a bug, as the saying goes in the tech circles. Instead, it was a deliberate UI decision with some technical reasoning behind it. According to Mosseri, the whole system was referred to as “rug pull,” apparently a cheeky reference to the crypto scam where a bad actor suddenly abandons the project after making a bank.

Well, literary inspirations aside, it was a poor decision. Even Mosseri admitted to as much. “It’s really annoying,” he quipped in an update shared on his Instagram account, discussing recent changes to the platform that users might not be aware of.

So why exactly did Instagram embrace such a frustrating tactic in the first place? “We did that because we were trying to load content and it was taking a while, so we showed you something that was already downloaded in the meantime,” Mosseri said. “Generally, it’s good for engagement.”

Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends

It seems the decision to nix the rug pull system for loading content on app launch actually had a negative impact, but Instagram ultimately moved ahead. “We actually took a little bit of engagement hit for this, but it is a much better experience for the average user,” Mosseri said.

Talking about updates, the Meta-owned social media platform recently launched a campaign to combat the ills of digital sextortion in partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). The idea is to educate young users about the signs of abusive intent from bad actors.

On a related note, the company also added more restrictions to accounts owned by users under the age of 16 years. “Instagram Teen Accounts,” as the company calls them, put guardrails on conversations with strangers and also mandate parental permission to tweak the built-in protections.

Just over a month ago, the company also highlighted tweaks to the way users communicate on Instagram. Among them is the arrival of AI stickers, piggybacking on the advances offered by Meta AI that are now available across the sister social apps.

For ease of access, Instagram users are now able to pin up to three personal or group chats at the top of their DM section. Then there are other thoughtful features like the ability to send silent messages and view-once content, mirroring a strategy that is also available on communication platforms like WhatsApp.