The 2026 IG algorithm isn't anti-art. It's anti-single-image.

What’s a trial reel and how do you do it?

I've done a few trail reels before market events to try to grow my non-followers. Best ones show me in the reel either showing my work or painting progress. Lots fun!

Likes being the weakest signal on the board is wild when you think about how much energy people put into chasing them. The 17% drop for static images is rough news for anyone who posts single paintings or photographs.

Thank you for sharing this!

ДУЖЕ корисний пост! ДЯКУЮ!!!

Quick Question: Does the Repost downgrade apply to the more temporal and timely Stories?

The real reason I bring this up has little to do with marketing and more to do with activism and political organizing. There is a large journalism/political community on Instagram (which I am a part of) which spends a lot of time and effort getting the word out about ICE activities and blatant human rights violations in communities. Often times, this is the first channel word gets out on, which helps organizers mobilize, defend immigrants and others who are being unlawfully beaten, murdered, and seized, disappeared. Instagram is a big part of how people are BEARING WITNESS.

Now what Mosseri may be framing as optimization strategies also reflect deep algorithmic things that he ultimately controls. It's Ye Olde Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven (first utilized by Google in the late 1990s): Whatsoever he blesses is blessed and whatsoever he curses is cursed and cast into the bottomless pit of no-traffic, with much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Suppressing political and other forms of free speech through algorithmic weighting is a political act if it is deliberately downgrading the sharing of viral information to those best able to act quickly and respond to the situation on the ground, to bear witness, record it, if not to be able to stop it entirely.

If these things did not exist with sufficient virality, would we even know about the shootings of Renee Good and Jacob Pretti?

Thank you for this, Patrick!