TikTok is currently staring at an existential crisis. If the Presidential miracle doesn’t come through and the social media site shuts down in the US on January 19th, a social media exodus is imminent.
I’ve seen that happen in India, when a platform with 200 million users went dark in a rush. Most didn’t get a chance to migrate. Some never recovered. Instagram happily lapped up the “TikTok migrants” and grew.
The Meta-owned platform is not without its faults. Targeted harassment and a drugs problem ensaring teens are just two of them. Now, the company is launching a feature that would open the floodgates of harassment and devalue the “safe haven” it once was.
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri announced a new section where one can see videos their online friends interacted with. It will be a dedicated tab in the Reels feed, populated by clips that friends have liked or commented on.
The reasoning? The company wants Instagram to turn into a place “where you explore your interests with your friends.” Not that Instagram doesn’t offer similar features already.
You can obviously share Reels in groups, be it friends, family, or just work colleagues. Or, you can create special lists where you can directly add content for both people to see without going through the whole DM’ing process.
Instagram already shows you content that your connections have liked, and quite visibly, too. If one of my friends (or even an account that is not a mutual follower) has liked a fun video, it can randomly appear on my feed already.
Such videos clearly show the profile picture of the account(s) which gave it a red heart. I can simply tap on that profile icon with a heart on it and open their full social page. It’s like Instagram wants me to see content that my friends find worth engaging.
I may not necessarily like the dark comedy meme my cousin liked, but that’s just Instagram’s way of enforcing its algorithmic overlordship over my own preferences.
I don’t see every piece of content liked by all my friends, or accounts that I follow. I just randomly stumble into it. Moving forward, you will have a dedicated space where you will find just that. The whole video engagement history.
“We want Instagram to not only be a place where you consume entertaining content, but one where you connect over that content with friends,” explains the Instagram chief.
I don’t want that. Nearly half a dozen people that I talked with earlier today, across different age groups, felt uneasy with the premise of exposing their likes to their whole friend and follower list.
Likes and the price for intimacy
Likes are, well, more than just likes. They are a way to tell the algorithm that you want more of that content. You don’t necessarily want to broadcast that information to your entire circle.
Likes are a way to express support to a creator. They are a medium of encouragement to lift the spirit of your friends and family members. They are a digital conduit for making people feel seen.
They are an expression of courage, especially when you find a niche digital corner where you can express your vulnerability. Discover a sense of community, without the fear of being shamed or ridiculed.
Anonymity, or whatever little of that you get on Instagram, fosters online courage. Here’s what a research paper published in the Computers in Human Behavior journal says:
“When individuals feel anonymous within an online community, they may experience an enhanced social identification with the community and a desire to engage in behaviors that are consistent with the norms and moral standards of the community, even if doing so potentially comes with a personal cost.”
Another research published in the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems journal broaches the topic of intimacy and anonymity on social media. “People self-disclose less as content intimacy increases,” it says.
Instagram once had a similar feature called the “Following” tab where you could see the engagement activities of your friends, all cataloged under a unified dashboard. The company got rid of that feature back in 2019. Why bring it back now, Instagram?
Safe haven, no longer
For anyone who finds a safe haven in an obscure corner of the internet, anonymity is the secret weapon that allows them to express their true self. Ask any queer or trans person in your circle, and you will understand.
The same applies to any person out there, who has faced bias or harassment for expressing themselves.
As a person who has been harassed more times than I care to remember for their religious identity and didn’t fight back, I express my courage via likes to the brave few who challenge that narrative on social media.
I don’t want to publicize that support to my entire pool. That’s a part of my identity that I am not comfortable going public about. In the context of social media and public engagement, we are dealing with sum total of our identity, both public and intimate sides.
“Identity is thus a social identity, one inextricably interwoven with and thus shaped through our engagements with others,” writes Hallvard Fossheim, a professor at the University of Bergen, in his book, Internet Research Ethics.
The fear of exposing what I like, especially content tailored to subjects that are intimate to me, is what keeps me from hitting like on Instagram. I prefer saving it, like bookmarks. I share that fear with a lot of people out there.
In this fantastic paper titled “Being watched and feeling judged on social media,” Rosalind Gill, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at City, University of London, makes a case for online anonymity and digital intimacy, based on interviews conducted over the span of a year.
Engagement and emotional consequences are delicately intertwined. I recently flagged to a peer of mine, how her likes on erotic literature content, are popping up on my feed, with a clear icon of her picture on the screen.
She was immensely embarrassed. She did not deserve to go through it. I merely flagged it personally, to avoid any unwanted scrutiny or ridicule for her, behind her back.
Instagram’s new feature takes away the safety of anonymous self-expression. I hope that the company offers a way to opt out of it. I don’t wish for anyone to stop liking what they find endearing to their heart. I don’t wish that for me, certainly.
