Instagram has long been accused of stealing features from platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitter/X. It appears that the company has looked to YouTube for its latest idea: unskippable ads that you have to watch for a period of time before being able to scroll further.

A Redditor posted images of the Instagram ad breaks. FireCubX writes that users will suddenly find they have hit the bottom of their feed, so to speak, and can’t scroll down any further. An “ad break” icon will appear with a countdown timer that prevents users from browsing through more content until they view an ad, at which point the counter starts running down.


I’m happy I only have a lemmy account

  • Yrt@feddit.de
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    5 months ago

    Wouldn’t it be funny, if that would end the doom scroll cause suddenly it’s a disturbance and can’t be skipped like other non liked content, so it breaks the trance and leaves the user with anger instead of numbness?

    • samus12345@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      User tolerance of online ads is really being tested lately with the increase of unskippable crap. I suspect that some will stop rather than deal with it, but most will just tolerate it. Which is what they’re counting on.

      • Yrt@feddit.de
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        5 months ago

        I guess you’re right, but especially Instagram for me is something that relies on this numbness doom scrolling comes with. Every other thing has another driver. Like YT or Twitch is something for entertainment like TV, so (semi) active watching stuff, Facebook and twitter (now X) is something to get angry about, but Instagram is unsatisfying scrolling without knowing why. But why let it stop here and there, if it breaks this drooled scrolling. And if you’re in need of this feeling, there is also tiktok (as of right know, until the unstoppable ads are profitable).

    • SacredHeartAttack@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The sheer amount of accounts I don’t follow and/or adds I DO see already do this for me. It’s a nice “feature” they added for me. Way to go Meta. I get bored fast now and close the app.