Just a day after two of Instagram's biggest users complained about changes being made to the social network, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri issued a public statement acknowledging that the platform's pivot to video is "not yet good."
Mosseri posted the mea culpa to his Twitter profile following negative feedback from celebrities Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian, who between them have 686 million followers on the platform. The sisters both shared a message reading "Make Instagram Instagram Again," complaining that it was "trying to be TikTok" instead of focusing on photo sharing.
As CNBC reports, Mark Zuckerberg — CEO of Instagram parent company Meta — has been pushing into shortform video content, a market that TikTok dominates.
But Instagram's video push has been met with backlash from users, who have used social media to voice their displeasure. The post shared by Jenner, who is the platform's most-followed woman, has nearly 1.7 million likes. A Change.org petition demanding, in all caps, "CHRONOLOGICAL TIMELINES" and "AN ALGORITHM THAT FAVORS PHOTOS" has racked up more than 148,000 signatures.
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In his video, Mosseri insisted that the TikTok-like full-screen version of Instagram's feed is a test that is only seen by "a few percentage of people out there," and admitted that it would need to be greatly improved if it is ever going to be given to all users.
But replies to the executive's video were far from positive, with many continuing to criticize the platform for its efforts to take on TikTok.
Others railed against the company's efforts to diversify users' feeds with posts from accounts other than the ones they already follow.
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Still, it appears that whether the backlash comes from users or from Kim Kardashian, Instagram will continue its video-centric push. In his video, Mosseri said that the company will "continue to support photos," but noted that he believes "that more and more of Instagram is going to become video" whether or not the company proactively pushes it in that direction.
"If you look at what people share on Instagram, that's shifting more and more to video over time," he said. "If you look at what people like and consume and view on Instagram, that's also shifting more and more to video over time, even when we stop changing anything. So we're going to have to lean into that shift."
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