Stop calling it social media – these firms don't care what we want

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and their ilk were meant to let us chat freely in a digital public square, but the firms running social media are just as corporate as old media, says Annalee Newitz

By Annalee Newitz

ANOTHER month, another algorithm change on a social media platform that has everybody peeved online.

This time it is Instagram, the photo-sharing service owned by Facebook. Instead of showing us the cat photos and wedding pictures we want, the app is clogging up our friend feeds with tons of “reels”: autoplaying mini-movies. The problem? Nobody asked for this. The reels aren’t from friends or people you follow. They are just random videos mucking up your feed and making it harder to find the pictures you want to see. As many Instagram fans pointed out, it is a pathetic attempt to …