We Never Actually Wanted to See Our Friends' Photos
Instagram's aggressive pivot to Reels and DMs reveals an uncomfortable truth about our actual preferences versus what we claim to want
Instagram crossed 3 billion monthly users this month and immediately announced changes that demote what made it famous: photos from friends. The company is moving DMs to the prime navigation real estate, displacing the create button, and is testing opening directly to Reels instead of the home feed.
The message is clear: Instagram is aggressively dialing down friend photos and dialing up algorithmic video because that’s what actually works.
Adam Mosseri didn’t mince words. Almost all of Instagram’s growth comes from Reels, DMs, and algorithmic recommendations. The traditional photo feed from friends has been declining for years. Instagram isn’t killing it outright. That would cause revolt. Instead, they’re steadily minimizing its prominence while amplifying what users actually engage with: videos from strangers.
This reveals an uncomfortable truth we’ve been avoiding. We claim we want to see authentic moments from friends. We complain when the algorithm shows us random content instead of people we follow. We insist social media has lost its way, becoming less “social” and more “media.”
But our behavior tells a different story. Given the choice between a friend’s vacation photos and a perfectly edited Reel from a stranger, we choose the Reel. We scroll past birthday pics to watch another cooking video. We spend three hours watching content from accounts we don’t follow, then complain the algorithm is ruining everything. Instagram’s changes aren’t fighting user preferences. They’re following them.
The platform is running a massive real-world experiment in revealed versus stated preferences. Every time they increase algorithmic content, engagement goes up. Every time they emphasize Reels over photos, watch time increases. Every time they make it easier to share videos via DM rather than post photos to the feed, users do exactly that. The pattern is clear: we don’t actually want what we say we want.
This gradual shift from social graphs to algorithmic curation has been happening for years, but Instagram’s latest changes mark an inflection point. The company is no longer trying to balance its original photo-sharing DNA with video competition from TikTok. It’s accepting that TikTok was right all along: people prefer professionally entertaining content from strangers to amateur photos from friends.
Instagram’s willingness to follow these preferences isn’t altruistic. It’s profitable in ways the photo feed never was. Video fundamentally changes the attention economics. Photos get consumed quickly, users can scroll through dozens per minute. Video demands sustained engagement, keeping users on the platform exponentially longer.
This creates a compounding business advantage: more time means more opportunities to serve ads, while extended engagement generates richer behavioral data that makes each ad more valuable. The platform learns not just what you looked at, but how long you watched, whether you replayed sections—giving them a highly precise picture of your interests. This granular data makes targeting exponentially more profitable.
The economics compound from there. Video ads sell for premium CPMs compared to static image ads. Advertisers can repurpose their TikTok and YouTube creative. The immersive format drives higher click-through rates.
Algorithmic feeds solve the content supply problem that killed chronological feeds. Your friends only post so many photos. Eventually, you’ve seen everything and you leave the app. But an algorithmic feed drawing from millions of creators never runs dry. It can insert ads every fourth post without exhausting organic content. It can test infinite variations to optimize your personal engagement. The feed becomes a slot machine that never stops paying out just enough dopamine to keep you pulling.
But the deeper reality is that Instagram isn’t choosing profits over users. It’s choosing what users actually do over what they say they want.
By emphasizing DMs alongside Reels, Instagram creates a more honest social architecture. Instead of performing friendship through public photo likes, we have actual conversations about content we’ve watched. The platform is unbundling the social network: entertainment comes from algorithms, real connection happens in messages, and the public friend feed becomes vestigial.
We’re witnessing the end of “ambient intimacy.” The idea that we could stay connected to hundreds of people through casual photo sharing was always a fantasy. We don’t actually have bandwidth for hundreds of relationships. Most of us maintain maybe a dozen meaningful connections, and those happen in DMs. Everything else is just entertainment wearing a social costume.
This shift devastates the creators who built audiences through Instagram’s original promise. Photographers who crafted carefully composed images now watch their reach evaporate as the algorithm demands motion and sound. Visual artists must pivot to video or become invisible. The platform that once rewarded aesthetic curation now rewards whoever triggers engagement signals within three seconds. But this creative destruction reflects a deeper truth about what we actually value. We’re choosing entertainment over artistry, algorithm over intention, strangers over friends.
Every platform sees the same data and draws the same conclusion. TikTok’s center of gravity has always been the interest graph (“For You”). YouTube Shorts is pure algorithm. Twitter defaults to “For You” over “Following.” They’re all converging on the same model because user behavior demands it. We vote with our attention, and we consistently vote for algorithms over friends.
This isn’t necessarily dystopian. Maybe it’s more honest. The fiction that we wanted to see every acquaintance’s brunch photos was exhausting to maintain. The algorithm doesn’t judge us for preferring entertainment to social obligation. It just gives us what we actually want instead of what we’re supposed to want.
Instagram’s 3 billion users aren’t victims of algorithmic manipulation. They’re participants in a collective choice. Every time we spend an hour watching Reels instead of scrolling through friends’ photos, we’re voting for this future. The platform isn’t abandoning its users. It’s abandoning the pretense that users want something they demonstrably don’t.
The photo feed isn’t dead, but it’s dying of neglect. Our neglect. Instagram is just rearranging the furniture to match how we actually live. We want endless entertainment, occasionally interrupted by actual conversations with people we care about. We don’t want to maintain hundreds of performative relationships through photo likes.
Ambient intimacy is dead. We killed it with our choices, one Reel at a time. What remains is more honest: algorithmically curated entertainment for the masses, genuine connection for the few who matter. Instagram isn’t destroying social media. It’s finally admitting what social media actually became.