Instagram is a social media website centered on posting and sharing photos. Founded in 2010, Instagram was acquired by Facebook at the behest of founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg. As of 2024, Instagram claims to have two billion monthly active users. 1
Early History
Instagram was founded in 2010 by Kevin Systrom. The company originated from an app called Burbn, a “location-based check-in” app. It received $500,000 from venture capitalists Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. Mike Kreiger joined the company after and was listed as a co-founder. 2 3
The Instagram app was launched on October 6, 2010. Within its first week, the app had been downloaded 100,000 times. By the end of the year, the app had 1 million users. 2 3
In 2011, Instagram raised $7 million in Series A funding, giving the company a $25 million valuation. Soon after, Systrom turned down a $500 million buy-out offer from Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter. 2 3
Facebook Acquisition
In 2012, Facebook (now Meta Platforms) acquired Instagram for $1 billion in cash and stock. In 2020, the U.S. House of Representatives Antitrust Subcommittee released emails showing exchanges between Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s then-chief financial officer David Ebersman before the deal. According to the emails, Zuckerberg claimed: 4
“How much we should be willing to pay to acquire mobile app companies like Instagram…These companies have the properties where they have millions of users (up to about 20m at the moment for Instagram), fast growth, a small team (10-25 employees) and no revenue… The businesses are nascent but the networks are established, the brands are already meaningful and if they grow to a large scale they could be very disruptive to us.” 4
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) criticized the acquisition during a 2020 hearing before the House Antitrust Subcommittee, in which Zuckerburg was present to testify along with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Apple CEO Tim Cook. Rep. Nadler claimed, “Facebook, by its own admission saw Instagram as a threat that could potentially siphon business away from Facebook…[s]o rather than compete with it, Facebook bought it. This is exactly the type of anti-competitive acquisition the antitrust laws were designed to prevent.” 5
In his testimony, Zuckerberg defended the acquisition by claiming, “I think the FTC had all of these documents and unanimously voted at the time not to challenge the acquisition…[i]n hindsight, it probably looks obvious that Instagram would have reached the scale that it has today. But at the time, it was far from obvious.” 4 5
In 2020, Instagram’s ad revenue was reported as around $22 billion. 4
Controversies
Accusations of Censorship
In December 2023, nonprofit group Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report claiming that Instagram’s parent company Meta had been “silencing voices in support of Palestine and Palestinian human rights” following the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks against the State of Israel. According to HRW, between October and November 2023, HRW claimed to have documented over 1,050 “takedowns and other suppression of content” on Instagram and Facebook. The report noted that the removals were initiated, in part, due to Meta’s “Dangerous Organizations and Individuals” (DOI) policy to remove profiles, “that proclaim a violent mission or are engaged in violence.” 6 7
In February 2024, Instagram began a new feature where it automatically enrolled accounts into a new setting that limited the visibility of political content. Meta claimed the setting only stopped Instagram’s algorithm from promoting said political content. During a January 2021 earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had claimed, “One of the top pieces of feedback we’re hearing from our community right now is that people don’t want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services.” 8
In December 2023, Instagram released a new “Fact-Checked Control program” meant to allow users to control their degree of access to “fact-checked” posts. Several pro-Palestinian activist accounts claimed that the site’s new feature was censoring Pro-Palestinian content, and would later post guides for Instagram users on how to change their settings to turn off the fact-checking settings. 9
In August 2021, Instagram introduced a “Sensitive Content Control” setting which permits users to change the amount of access to images on their feed that are registered as “sensitive content” based on Artificial Intelligence (AI)-controlled algorithms. The settings were criticized by several profiles of artists and content creators for allegedly hiding their content from others’ feeds. In addition, several activist profiles accused the settings of hiding and censoring pro-Palestinian content. 10
Child Sex Abuse Material
In June 2023, the Wall Street Journal released a report claiming that several of the algorithms used by Instagram were inadvertently allowing the promotion of child sex abuse material content on the site as well as allowing users to connect and share illicit content with one another. The report further alleged that the issues with the site include control over content-discovery features, overseeing keywords and hashtags to find posts, and allegedly allowing users to search for content already marked as illegal material by its AI algorithms. Meta claimed it was acting to remove such illicit content, and had removed 490,000 accounts in January 2023 alone. 11
Underage Usage
In October of that year, 33 state attorneys general filed a collective lawsuit against several employees of Meta, including Instagram head Adam Mosseri. The suit claimed that social media apps owned by Meta promoted features that harmed young users’ mental health while those being sued allegedly ignored advocacy by current and former employees to build default safety features meant to protect said users. In addition, the suit claimed that underage users on Instagram were an “open secret” at the company. 12
References
- Humar, Naveen. “How Many People Use Instagram 2024 [New Data].” Demand Sage. September 30, 2024. Accessed October 10, 2024. https://www.demandsage.com/instagram-statistics/#:~:text=Instagram%20has%20more%20than%20500,share%20their%20photos%20and%20videos.
- “Instagram’s History: Full Evolution of Instagram Timeline (2024).” Post Builder App. January 2, 2024. Accessed October 10, 2024. https://postbuilderapp.com/blog/instagram-history-and-updated-timeline.
- Blystone, Dan. “Instagram: What It Is, Its History, and How the Popular App Works.” Investopedia. July 9, 2024. Accessed October 10, 2024. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/102615/story-instagram-rise-1-photo0sharing-app.asp.
- “Leaked emails reveal why Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram.” CNBC. Accessed October 10, 2024. https://www.cnbctv18.com/business/leaked-emails-reveal-why-mark-zuckerberg-bought-instagram-19399861.htm.
- “Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram as it was a ‘threat’ to Facebook.” Business Standard. July 30, 2020. Accessed October 10, 2024. https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/mark-zuckerberg-bought-instagram-as-it-was-a-threat-to-facebook-120073000324_1.html.
- Uzcátegui-Liggett, Natasha; Apodaca, Tomas. “Demoted, Deleted, and Denied: There’s More Than Just Shadowbanning on Instagram.” The Mark Up. February 25, 2024. Accessed October 10, 2024. https://themarkup.org/automated-censorship/2024/02/25/demoted-deleted-and-denied-theres-more-than-just-shadowbanning-on-instagram.
- “Meta’s Broken Promises.” Human Rights Watch. Accessed October 10, 2024. https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2023/12/ip_meta1223%20web.pdf.
- Guzman, Chad de. “What to Know About Meta’s ‘Political Content’ Limit—and How to Turn It Off on Instagram.” Time. March 27, 2024. Accessed October 10, 2024. https://time.com/6960587/meta-instagram-political-content-limit-off-setting-default/.
- Goggin, Ben. “Instagram quietly rolled out a misinformation feature that has sparked claims of stealth censorship.” NBC News. December 13, 2023. Accessed October 10, 2024. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/instagram-censor-fact-check-option-setting-ig-palestine-palestinian-rcna129484.
- Özkan, Melisa Mercan. “The Problems with Instagram’s AI Censorship.” Inflow. August 12, 2021. Accessed October 10, 2024. https://inflownetwork.com/the-problems-with-instagrams-ai-censorship/.
- Lahiri, Anusuya. “Investigation Reveals Instagram’s Algorithms Connect Users to Child-Sex Content Sellers, Promote Pedophile Networks: Report.” Benzinga. June 7, 2023. Accessed October 10, 2024. https://www.benzinga.com/news/23/06/32764525/investigation-reveals-instagrams-algorithms-connect-users-to-child-sex-content-sellers-promote-pedop.
- Barrabi, Thomas. “Ex-employees blast Instagram chief Adam Mosseri’s ‘mixed record’ on youth safety: report.” New York Post. December 20, 2023. Accessed October 10, 2024. https://nypost.com/2023/12/20/business/ex-employees-blast-instagram-chief-adam-mosseris-mixed-record-on-youth-safety-report/.