Kylie Jenner Says, ‘Make Instagram Instagram Again,’ but Chief Says Shift to Video Is Inevitable

Mosseri, head honcho at Instagram, is no doubt familiar with this incident. He rushed to address the concerns raised by Jenner, Bruening, and other users.

In a Reel posted on Tuesday morning, Mosseri said Instagram was experimenting with several different changes to the app. Upon hearing users’ concerns, he wanted to clarify a few things, he said. First, he pointed out that there a small percentage of users that are seeing a full-screen version of the Instagram feed. This is something the app is testing, and Mosseri acknowledged that it’s “not yet good” and would require more fine tuning if the company decided to roll it out to all users.

When it comes to the shift away from photos, which encompass a big chunk of recent complaints, Mosseri stated that he “love[d] photos” and that Instagram would continue to be a place for photos in the future. Yet, he remained committed to the platform’s shift to video and maintained that this would happen even if Instagram changed nothing.

“That said, I need to be honest, I do believe that more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time,” Mosseri said. “We see this even if we change nothing. We see this even if you just look at chronological feed. If you look at what people share on Instagram, that’s shifting more and more to videos over time. If you look at what people like and consume and view on Instagram, that’s also shifting more and more to video over time, even when we stop changing anything. So, we’re going to have to lean into that shift, while continuing to support photos.”

Lastly, Mosseri addressed the slew of recommended posts and videos Instagram was serving up to users lately from people they do not follow (in excess, in my opinion). The Instagram chief defended recommendations as a way to help users discover new things but admitted that if users were seeing content that they were uninterested in, that meant the app was “doing a bad job ranking.”

Mosseri said that Instagram would continue to try to improve its recommendations—no doubt inspired by TikTok’s addictive algorithm—because they were critical to help creators, especially small creators, reach new audiences and grow their followings.

“Now, this is a lot of change all at once, but know that a number of things about Instagram are going to stay the same. We’re going to stay committed to creators more broadly. We’re going to stay committed to supporting photos. We’re going to stay in a place where we try and put your friend’s content at the top of feed and at the front of stories whenever possible,” he said. “But we’re also going to need to evolve, because the world is changing quickly and we’re going to have to change along with it.”

In case you were keeping track, while Mosseri was diplomatic in his response, he basically said, “I hear your concerns… but yeah, not happening.”