You open up Instagram on your smartphone and immediately see an intriguing video on your feed. Suddenly, before you can even dive into the clip, the feed refreshes, and the video is gone.
It seems like something like that would be a glitch, right?
Well, apparently Instagram was doing this on purpose. But, it was really annoying users so now they’ve stopped it.
Instagram depreciates the “rug pull”
In a video posted to his Instagram Stories, Instagram head Adam Mosseri was asked to share a recent change on Instagram that “people may not know about.”
Mosseri shared that Instagram removed what was internally known at the company as the “rug pull.” Mosseri defined the rug pull as when users open up the Instagram app and see content, but it immediately disappears and gets pushed down the feed as new content is brought in.
Mashable Light Speed
Shockingly, Mosseri said that this practice was done on purpose on the Meta-owned app. According to Mosseri, Instagram decided to show this content because it was already loaded in the app and gave users something to see as the app downloaded new content from when the user last opened Instagram on their device.
“It was generally good for engagement,” said Mosseri before admitting that it was “really annoying.”
So, because it was annoying, Instagram decided to do away with it.
It should be noted that Instagram is far from the only app that does this. I personally have complained about how Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, shows content in the For You feed that immediately disappears shortly after the app is opened on a user’s smartphone. Initially, I assumed this was a glitch, much like what I thought was happening on Instagram. But now, it appears that some social media companies are fine with giving their users a lesser experience if it means they get to hit their engagement metrics.
Here’s hope this practice ceases across the board on all social media platforms.