Instagram eliminates the annoying disappearing video known as 'rug pull'.
The platform owned by Meta has acknowledged that users did not like it, although they were doing it intentionally.
When you open Instagram on your smartphone, it's common to come across an interesting video in your feed, only for the app to refresh right before you can watch it, causing the content to disappear. While this may seem like a technical glitch, Instagram was actually doing it intentionally, although it caused a lot of frustration among users, leading the platform to abandon this practice.
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, explained in a video shared through his Stories that the company had decided to eliminate what they internally called the "rug pull." This term referred to the situation where users entered the app and saw content that immediately disappeared as they were pushed off by new posts loading. Mosseri admitted that this strategy was implemented deliberately since the content was already available in the app, providing something to watch while more information was loaded from the last time the user had accessed it.
According to Mosseri, while this tactic helped increase user interest, it was also quite annoying. Due to this frustration, Instagram decided to remove the "rug pull" from its operation.
It's important to mention that this isn't the only platform utilizing such techniques. Other services, like X (formerly Twitter), have also shown content that quickly disappears after opening the app, which could initially have been interpreted as a technical slip. However, it seems that some social media networks are willing to sacrifice user experience in favor of improving their engagement metrics.
Hopefully, this trend will stop across all social media platforms.
