Instagram Notes: How Instagram Filled Everyone's* Feed With Porn
July 19, 2024
This article doesn't contain any explicit content, but contains references to it. Viewer discretion is advised, maybe. I don't know, the worst thing I do is say "porn"
the start of notes
instagram notes was released in late 2022. the feature allows you to set a 60 character status message that is visible only to your mututals. this message is only visible for 24 hours, and appears in a carousel at the top of the direct message page. its essentially a discord custom status. you can tap a note to reply to it, which just sends a dm to the person who wrote it.
the whole reason for this feature was to make instagram feel like more of an app for close friends, probably in an attempt to make people post more (which younger people stopped doing as much as its "too stressful"). this feature quickly became popular, being compared to AOL Instant Messenger away messages. so, instagram decided to expand on it.
they added the ability to set a 30 second snippet of a song as your note (and it could be any 30 seconds, not just the itunes preview). they also added the ability to set a boomerang along with your note, which is a short, looping video without sound that has to be captured with the camera. the music feature is the main thing people use notes for, the boomerangs less often.
later on, the ability to like a note was also added. you could simply double tap a note to like it. i have no idea what liking a note actually does, but i assume it just sends a notification.
however, there was still one more expansion for notes that was removed later on. you could ask questions, and your friends could answer them. you could see the responses of your friends. but the thing with these questions was that the question would also be shared with the friends of anybody who answered the question.
if that doesn't make sense, basically, imagine there are three people. person 1 and 2 and friends, and person 2 and 3 are friends. person 1 starts a prompt. person 2 answers that prompt. person 1 and 3 can view the prompt and the answer to it, because both are friends with person 2. person 3 decides to also answer the prompt. person 2 can see the answer, but person 1 cannot, as they aren't friends.
anyways, instagram staff quickly realized that this feature was confusing, and all people used it for was to ask freaky questions, so it was quickly and quietly removed.
the latest update
yesturday, instagram announced over threads that you could now attach notes to posts.
Post by @instagramView on Threads
these would appear as little floating heads, and would only appear to your friends. adding a note would also make the post more likely to appear in your friends' feeds. these expire after 4 days.
this is very similar to how reposts worked on tiktok when they were first introduced. reposts would be more likely to appear in your friends' feed, and you could add a private comment. later, tiktok made it so repost comments would be public and appear as regular comments to everyone else, and later removed the ability to add a comment to reposts entirely. despite it's inconsistencies, reposts were a massive success on tiktok. so, what went wrong when porting them to instagram?
MY FAMILY IS ON THIS APP
instagram reels has a reputation for hosting much more edgy content. instagram allows artistic nudity as well as shocking videos, such as videos capturing deaths of people. but if you dig hard enough through the instagram archives, you can find straight up porn videos, some with over a million likes. so when instagram basically added a repost button, you already know exactly what "funny" people were about to do.
the main thing is that there was no announcement this was happening, so everyone was confused. suddenly, everyones feed of cute art or whatever was suddenly filled with the same 10 porn videos. and almost all the note captions just said something like "get this shit off my screen", as people only saw "add a note". some people were spreading this without even knowing it.
another fun thing is that sometimes you would get notified when someone added a note to a video. this means that people were avoiding opening instagram to avoid the adult content, so they were being sent notifications of it instead. this is like getting sent an email from google photos with pictures of your ex with the caption "remember this?"
the fun thing is there is no way to turn these off. you are going to see these posts in your feed if you want to or not. the only thing you can do is disable people from adding notes on your posts.
i want to mention that if you just happened to follow the right people, none of this happened to you. when it happened to me, i had to block one person and it went away. that person even sandwiched bible verses in-between porn videos, which, alright. if nothing happened to your feed, you should be thankful that you follow such kind and caring people who aren't freaks.
eventually, it died off. now, everyone can browse instagram in peace. well, as long as you dont mind people reposting the occasional ai generated cat video with the caption "so sad".
instagram has yet to say anything about this feature and the future of it. that is probably because it has only been out a day.