Instagram Targets
I remember a brief period shortly after Instagram introduced in-feed advertisements when I was getting mostly travel ads that consisted of well-composed scenic landscapes and cityscapes and sponsored nature photos. Which…well, was fine! They blended in with all the scenic and nature photographers I was following! I almost hit “like” on a few! Back in 2017, I wasn’t sure whether to be disturbed, or to look at it in terms of XKCD’s idea of constructive spambots. (Mission accomplished? Maybe, but looking back from today, that’s basically what “generative AI” does, and it turns out it’s still disturbing.) It’s probably the only time I’ve come close to appreciating targeted advertising. It was possible to use just context and not full behavioral surveillance, and it actually surfaced something worth seeing. That said, I never clicked through to arrange a trip through any of the posts. Apparently, it was ineffective across the board, because as I mentioned, that period was brief. (Targeted advertising doesn’t work as well as its proponents claim, and oh how I wish it hadn’t become the standard method of paying for online services.) By 2019 I was seeing big box stores and fast food, crackers and cold medicine, movie posters, brand logos and slogans. They weren’t even trying. It was fully Facebook-ified, they were mining as much of my data as they possibly could, and this was the best they could do? They’d also tweaked the feed algorithm to push more ads, more sponsored posts, more allegedly-popular posts instead of the pictures from friends and photographers I wanted to see. Instagram no longer sparked joy. That’s around the time I mostly shifted to Pixelfed for casual photo sharing. I cross-posted for a while, but eventually deleted my account after leaving it unused for several years. Since then I’ve moved from Pixelfed to a compatible self-hosted site. And yet I’m still on Flickr. As much as it lost its way during the Yahoo years, it never stopped being about the photos. The post Instagram Targets first appeared on K-Squared Ramblings >>>
