The Tender Trap

Cici Thompson considers how Instagram has ceased to be a place for nostalgic photos of friends and news from favorite artists into a tender trap of unwanted content. OPINION—Instagram, and its cousin platforms, no longer deliver the posts of friends, family, or that favorite artist we followed by choice. Instead, we find these things among ... The Tender Trap

Cici Thompson considers how Instagram has ceased to be a place for nostalgic photos of friends and news from favorite artists into a tender trap of unwanted content.

OPINION—Instagram, and its cousin platforms, no longer deliver the posts of friends, family, or that favorite artist we followed by choice. Instead, we find these things among a kind of littered playground. Why? Because the world’s most powerful media company is not run by our friends, families or fellow artists. Instagram is not even run by a billionaire. It’s run mostly by robots, that serve us “a lot of stuff” we didn’t ask for. The robots have one purpose: keeping us engaged.

We’ve long passed the days when social media resembled a neighborhood bulletin board, a place where we connected and shared. Instagram and its cousins, in their latest form, have become something else entirely—a content monopoly, an advertising monopoly, and a cultural vacuum. A monopoly not only in Instagram’s scale but also in its control over what we consume.

The shift has been gradual, but significant. At first, social media platforms like Instagram were places where users shaped their own experiences, choosing what posts to follow. But as algorithms took over and Instagram found ways to make a sizable profit from influencers, engagement became the currency of the internet, and platforms optimized for it. Influencers are essentially non-employees of the world’s most powerful magazine who are paid, if it all, not by any measure of ethics typically associated with newsroom labor, solely by their ability to generate views.

As a result of the role of influencers in Instagram’s profit, what keeps us scrolling tends to be less meaningful, and more provocative and distracting by design. The more time we spend online, the more money these platforms make from ads. Instagram reaps a monopolistic reward, having taken in $49.8 billion dollars last year alone, according to Business of Apps. And we, the users, have unwittingly become the consumers of the byproduct: meaningless content.

Outsized control comes at other costs, too, which the courts have begun to notice. Because the algorithms prioritize content that drives engagement, even if it’s harmful or misleading, in the past year, we’ve seen cracks form in the legal immunity Instagram and its peers have long enjoyed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit delivered a bombshell ruling in a case involving TikTok’s algorithm. In this case, a dangerous “blackout challenge” video surfaced in the feed of 10-year-old Nylah Anderson, who tragically lost her life attempting the challenge. The court ruled that TikTok could not escape liability by claiming that the video had been posted by a third party. Instead, the court found that the platform’s algorithm had played an active role in promoting the video, calling TikTok’s actions “first-party speech.” Essentially, the robots’ commander stands to account, legally, for the choices of the platform.

Then in July 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court sent back two major cases challenging state laws that limit how social media platforms can moderate content. While the court avoided directly ruling on Section 230, a law which has long protected tech companies from the consequences of what users post, Justice Clarence Thomas has signaled an interest in revisiting the broad scope of the law, suggesting that platforms should be held responsible for their content moderation practices and algorithmic amplification.

If the courts continue down this path, the algorithms that dictate so much of what we see—those invisible forces that decide which images, videos, and stories rise to the top—may soon be subject to unprecedented scrutiny. For Instagram, whose algorithm has become notorious for prioritizing virality at the expense of culture, this is not a small problem.

It’s too early to know exactly what the future holds for Instagram, but one thing is clear: the days of social media platforms using robots to control our attention and our culture should end. Whether Instagram will be able to adapt—or how increased scrutiny will affect its business which outpaces the GDP of Bolivia—remains to be seen. What’s certain is that Instagram and its cousins cannot claim to be neutral platforms forever.

To pretend otherwise is to ignore the gravity of its role in shaping current culture.