Instagram removes offensive ‘rug pull’ disappearing video

You open Instagram on your smartphone and immediately see an interesting video in your feed. Suddenly, before you even get to the clip, the feed refreshes, and the video is gone.

Seems like something like that would be a mistake, right?

Yes, apparently Instagram was doing this on purpose. But, it was really annoying the users so now they have done it he stopped it.

Instagram is reducing the value of “rug pull”

In a video posted on his Instagram Stories, the head of Instagram Adam Mosseri was asked to share a recent change in Instagram “that people may not know about.”

Mosseri shared that Instagram has removed what was known within the company as a “rug pull.” Mosseri described pullback as when users open the Instagram app and see content, but quickly disappear and are moved down the feed as new content is delivered.

Shockingly, Mosseri said the practice was done on purpose in an operating system owned by Meta. According to Mosseri, Instagram decided to show this content because it was already loaded into the app and gave users something to see as the app downloads new content since the last time the user opened Instagram on their device.

“Usually it was a good engagement,” Mosseri said before admitting it was “really annoying.”

So, because it was annoying, Instagram decided to get rid of it.

It should be noted that Instagram is far from the only app that does this. I personally have complained about how Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, shows content in your feed that disappears immediately after the application is opened on the user’s smartphone. At first, I thought this was a mistake, it’s similar to what I thought was happening on Instagram. But now, it seems some social media companies are okay with giving their users less information if it means they’ll be able to beat their engagement metrics.

Here’s hoping that this trend will end in all social media.