Instagram has it’s fair share of blame for the trend, but I don’t think they were the progenitor, as it were. Snapchat was far more heavy-handed with face altering filters from the get-go, as I remember it. Instagram was mostly just the “old-school” sepia tone, black-and-white type filters for the most part until that picked up.
Meta should probably never be blamed for innovating when all they do is steal ideas from potential competitors and crudely duct tape them onto existing products. Instagram was once a useful, good app and now it’s 80% features from Snapchat and TikTok and you maybe see a friend’s post a week late.
Now now, they innovated by turning Facebook from the way you could see what your friends were doing on your feed into algorithmically determining exactly which batshit insane ‘news’ stories from cranks and posts from crazy people would be the most effective rage bait to specifically you once they figured out that anger and rage are the most effective way to cause retention and engagement.
They basically scientifically perfected trolling, and figured out how to monetize it.
Sure it widely proliferated dangerous anti science nonsense, bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia, fostered the Q Anon insanity mind plague and facilitated it going mainstream, but hey, hate sells.
Adobe rn:
Now everybody will learn that I’m ugly.
Oh no! Anyway…
Filters will not be going away altogether on Instagram. First-party filters created by Meta will continue to be available.
