Two hops, two hops!
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Instagram is the master of changing shit no one asked them to change. Most notably, getting rid of chronological order in favor of a shitty algorithm that has fucked up engagement numbers and other analytics for countless bloggers, influencers, marketers and beyond. Or offering an option to share on its father platform, Facebook, even though there’s a reason why the two are different.
I was surfing the internet on a rainy Thursday morning, minding everyone’s business but mine when I came across my cousin’s IG story where he protested about a new feature where he had to scroll the main feed horizontally instead of the standard vertical scrolling.
Wait, what?!
My phone is set to auto-updates, but the WiFi wasn’t connected on my phone and I intentionally decided to fucking keep it that way to avoid this grotesque change. Shortly after, I started seeing everyone else’s reactions.
Seriously, almost every single IG story consisted of people threatening to delete their app.
Then—plot twist!—everything went back to normal. In a matter of minutes. My initial thought was: Which celebrity rep made this happen? Rihanna’s or Beyoncé’s? Did RiRi’s version of the Dora Milaje run up to Instagram’s headquarters dressed in Fenty? Did a swarm of bees attack the executive board meeting?
But, the real story was much more boring. Turns out, the whole thing was caused by a bug.
“Due to a bug, some users saw a change to the way their feed appears today,” the popular social media platform posted on their official Twitter account (wow, meta). “We quickly fixed the issue and feed is back to normal.” They apologized and life continued.
Or did it?
What if that was a beta test? TechCrunch did report Instagram was testing a “tap” feature to replace scrolling back in October.
Mmmhmm.
Instagram is always up and changing our social media space, then bouncing like, “Deal with it.” And after a bit of temper tantrum throwing—we usually do. We learn to adjust and move on with our lives. Maybe with a frown on our faces, but we do.
Maybe the feedback they received for this test (errr ... “bug”) will convince them not to go through with it. Or maybe not. Instagram said what it said and will do what it does.
Straight From 
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