Instagram To ‘Recommend’ Posts And It Sucks

Facebook-owned photo-sharing platform Instagram just quietly rolled out a new “recommended” post feature. The addition is clearly intended to increase engagement by users on the platform, but it seems not too many are excited about it. In fact, many are of the opinion that social media is already cluttered enough and a new feature that begs for attention is the last thing that users need.

As described in the platforms’ Help section, the new feature works pretty much as expected. Users will basically get recommendations based on the accounts that they follow as well as their general activity on the social network. When users log on to their profiles, they’ll see a new section that’s labeled “Recommended For You,” which is separate from their official feeds.

On paper, it seems it’s a way for Instagram to encourage users to look for other accounts that they could follow that might have the same qualities as the ones that they already do. However, it seems there is a significant number of users who are just not looking forward to this, Gizmodo reports.

Social media is already messy enough as it is, with major social networks constantly begging for their users’ attention via notifications, pings, and emails. With this new feature, users will need to deal with recommended accounts of people they don’t even know and would likely have no reason to follow.

Of course, users could just as easily ignore these recommendations, but it’s not always that easy. Notifications are always distracting and the more space they take up on screen, the bigger of a pain in the neck they become.

There’s also the small matter of someone’s photos or accounts getting recommended to others who may or may not know them. The creepiness of the situation would be enough to send chills down the spin of users who value at least some of their privacy.