The year Instagram became Facebook

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram spent much of the past eight years fighting to maintain its independence from Facebook. In 2020, the fight was over. Instagram has rolled out a series of features that are thoroughly Facebookian in nature. They’re largely focused around getting you to use the app for longer (and also tend to feel messy and incomplete). It’s hard not to see this as the moment that Instagram succumbed to Facebook’s worst tendency: a focus on growth at all costs, even if it means making a product that’s less enjoyable to use. The most telling change was one of the less explosive The changes are numerous. Facebook Messenger was integrated into Instagram DMs, a beat-for-beat TikTok clone was created and given its own section within the app, the... Continue reading…
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