I’d guess the simple answer may be that people don’t care/know, but for those that have ditched Facebook for whatever reason, yet still use Instagram, it’s a little surprising.
Is it partly a result of it being a more focused/limited form of social media that filters out some of the stuff people didn’t like from Facebook?
TLDR: It doesn’t matter who makes the platform, rather what the platform is like. Insta isn’t great but it’s so much better than FB.
I use Instagram a little bit. I’ve ditched Facebook a very long time ago, at least 7 years if not more. Whether or not it’s from Meta never made a difference.
Things were different when I joined Insta, it was a passable way to find art and collect images and follow artists. I was never a fan, but considering I had to abandon DeviantArt (similar story to Reddit) Insta was the next best option available back then. Artstation was too CG and just getting started.
So yes, the reason I keep using it is because there isn’t really anything better when it comes to finding visual art in a broad variety of media. It’s a shit app, it has too much of things I don’t care about, but it is less stupid than FB so it gets a pass.
If there was a solid artist focused platform available today, that would let you follow art and artists of absolutely any media/genre, collect images and communicate etc, I’d jump in a heartbeat. I’d still keep insta solely for the chat, as over the years it became the only communication channel I have with some people.
I think it has a lot to do with Instagram esthetics and (under-the-radar-proposed) user behaviour.
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You are encouraged through suggested posts on insta to make everything about you look perfect, so your ig becomes in a sense your own advertisment. That is not so much on FB. FB was always life as it is.
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Instagram users are somehow not encouraged to post comments that much, rather to like, which reduces the likelihood of anyone ruining that image of yourself you are creating. Again, this is different on FB.
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Also, there are no groups, no communities on Insta, so users cannot connect in the same way like on FB, so there is no negative political or other association to it.
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Lastly, if you think about it, Mark always was and by this day remained the face of Facebook and Facebook only. Rarely anyone ever mentions he is also behind ig. And we know people - they tend not to think about stuff which aren’t mentioned.
For the record, I deleted both at the same time 2 years ago. WA I still have but prefer Telegram. Wish I could ditch WA as well. Telegram is far more advanced.
And WhatsApp, mother of the Standby Battery Drains. Bearer of the Wakelocks. Enemy of Deep Sleep.
For me it’s not a deal breaker. But in terms of standby it’s number 1. (Because I deleted everything else).
If I open BBS I get a mess of partial wakelocks: https://imgur.com/a/KzMQhR9
Unfortunately, you could say the same about WhatsApp…
WhatsApp is more problematic to leave though. Where I live, it’s the default messaging app everyone uses. I haven’t texted anyone in ages. And I can also see why it’s the default, WhatsApp is just better than the competition. It’s end-to-end encrypted, so Meta cannot read your messages directly, it has good markdown-like formatting support, it’s has a lot of features, and it’s relatively stable.
I’ve been using Telegram and Signal with friends, but honestly Telegram doesn’t exactly feel safer to me, especially with e2e encryption not enabled by default (last time I checked). And Signal is better, but sometimes just a pain to use. No Markdown-like syntax (though formatting is finally possible via GUI), it constantly keeps desyncing devices that I use once every few weeks, and we’ve had plenty of bugs with not seeing messages of eachother.
Now, I can accept that to a degree, in return for better privacy. But no way in hell are laypeople like my family going to switch. WhatsApp is too good and safe enough to remain dominant.
