Taking a closer look at the psychological effects of Insta advertisements that target users every day.
Instagram. Click your Breakfast. Snap your lunch. Upload your dinner. Click heart on your friend's dog. Take a shot of the sunset and smack a vague inspirational quote on top of it.
You know, all the good stuff.
This is what the platform was designed for and what it claims to be. A place to view an endless gallery of perfect lives.
Nothing wrong with that, if that's what you're into.
However, underneath all the external validation and cat photos browser, lies an incredibly powerful marketing machine and data analysis engine with full facebook integration. And the popularity of the (now 800 million monthly users) platform is giving it an increasing influence over it's participants mindset.
How much data analysis is too much? How much personalization is too much? Where do we draw the line on app cross-linking data sharing?
Well, the thing is - we can't really determine the extent to which this malpractice is used, since neither facebook nor instagram has ever let anyone outside the company look into it's software.
But we can still measure it by looking at the exterior. And the exterior is frightening. When desire to drives sales, the desire to coerce you into consumerism, the desire to sell, sell & sell justifies messing with your head - something is wrong.
Actually, I'm fighting the urge to copy-paste the entire photostrip here, because of the brilliant way the author exposes how instagrams works behind the scenes. But that's not what Steemit is for. I will leave the link here and encourage you to read the whole photo story for yourself and give Laura a clap, it's really really good.
What do you think?
Is showing a female user pictures of super skinny models every day going to increase her self-confidence? Hmm...maybe not.
Can we find a way to sell sports bras without shoving bra ads into the faces of our users just because they are 'interested in yoga' on facebook? Hmm...maybe yes.
What are we promoting instead?
