Instagram’s Influencer Dilemma Reaches Back Years

Instagram users have long complained that the app, which in the early 2010s became a must-have social network for millennials, has lost its way as it prioritizes creators. Emails from this week’s trial to determine whether Instagram-parent Meta Platforms violated antitrust law show how the company’s top executives debated the topic as far back as 2018. 

In one email from that year, Instagram head Adam Mosseri wrote to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg about an exchange between the two, where Zuckerberg apparently said it would be good for Instagram to compete more with YouTube and Mosseri said he “could get behind that.”

“I did not mean to suggest that I thought Instagram should focus any less on friends,” Mosseri wrote. He added that if Instagram were to focus “on influencers/interests and *not* on friends then you should know I think that’s a mistake.”