No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram

by Sarah Frier

Systrom decided Instagram should lean into its feel-good image, giving people even more tools to block out what they didn’t want to see. By December 2016, Instagram was letting users turn off comments for posts entirely if they wanted. Systrom’s willingness was in stark contrast to the attempts by Facebook and Twitter to err on the side of leaving content up, in an attempt to promote environments they said were neutral and open, but that in practice were rarely policed. The same ideas, of letting users turn off comments or block them according to keyword, had been suggested several times at Facebook over the years. But it had never stuck. If there were fewer comments, there were fewer push notifications, and fewer reasons for users to come back to the site. Even on Instagram’s team, the former Facebook employees promised Systrom that they would find a way to build out the tool so it was difficult to find, and applicable only to one post at a time. That way, it wouldn’t be used as often. Thanks but no thanks, Systrom said. He explained that he wasn’t worried about losing engagement, that the team was thinking too short-term. Over the long term, if the tool was easy to find and well publicized, people would have more affinity for Instagram, and the product would better weather storms of bad publicity, like the kind Facebook was starting to receive. Systrom wanted to think even bigger than comments. He started talking to Jackson Colaço about a “kindness” initiative. How could...