North West may troll mom Kim Kardashian over her influencer voice, but the Kar-Jenners just proved why they are the ultimate influencers. Kardashian and Kylie Jenner joined with a number of social media users in imploring Instagram to “Make Instagram Instagram Again” after the platform made moves to shift their focus away from photos and more to videos like their rival TikTok. The reality stars’ complaints were heard (who can ignore the Kardashians?), and the company has announced that it has pressed pause on the planned update. Let’s break down the latest.
Instagram CEO Walks Back Updates To The Social Media Platform's Algorithm
With TikTok’s rise in popularity in the social media world, Instagram apparently had an eye on the future, enacting features to try to provide a platform to meet their audience’s evolving needs. This included an increase in recommended content from accounts not followed by the users and full-screen posts similar to how videos appear on TikTok. In a statement released Thursday, a spokesperson for Instagram’s parent company Meta said (via CNN):
Based on our findings and community feedback, we're pausing the full-screen test on Instagram so we can explore other options, and we're temporarily decreasing the number of recommendations you see in your feed so we can improve the quality of your experience.
It sounds like the stars of The Kardashians (available for streaming with a Hulu subscription) may not be able to hold off the changes forever. Meta’s statement indicated they’re merely “pausing” the test and “temporarily” decreasing the recommended content users weren’t happy about, which indicates Instagram is still looking to evolve in hopes of ensuring the platform remains relevant. However, given the swift feedback from some of its most powerful users, the company said it’s going to take some more time on the decisions. The statement continued:
We recognize that changes to the app can be an adjustment, and while we believe that Instagram needs to evolve as the world changes, we want to take the time to make sure we get this right.
Part of the adjustment process is likely knowing that inevitably the changes are coming, but it will be interesting to see if its biggest influencers adapt or continue to fight the evolution.
How The Kardashian-Jenners Influenced The ‘Make Instagram Instagram Again’ Movement
Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian each shared a viral post that called for Instagram to “Make Instagram Instagram Again" and "stop trying to be TikTok I just want to see cute photos of my friends. Sincerely, everyone.” The reality stars' voices in particular carry weight with the powers that be at the company, given how many followers each has. Jenner is the platform’s most followed woman, with 361 million followers, and her sister Kim is not far behind her with 327 million.
Could Kylie Jenner already be shifting her focus to TikTok? As the Kylie Cosmetics founder has been facing backlash on Instagram in the past weeks over boasting about her and Travis Scott’s private jets, her daughter Stormi created her first TikTok video, showing herself and her mom with a funny face filter.
With the sisters having such a large reach, these two women alone go a long way in influencing the public's opinion about their social media preference. Just ask SnapChat. Back in 2018, the former "world's youngest billionaire" Kylie Jenner tweeted that she did “not open Snapchat anymore” after the new layout was criticized for being too complicated to navigate. She said the situation was “so sad,” and SnapChat likely agreed, as it saw its stock plummet by 6%, or $1.3 billion that day, CNN Business reported at the time.
The world is changing, and while most of us just have to adapt or die, the Kardashians continue to show they have enough influence to run the world — or at least the social media part of it. You can see more of Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner when The Kardashians returns to Hulu for Season 2 on September 22. In the meantime, check out some of the other best shows on Hulu.
