Instagram Vs VERO
David and Goliath
For anyone that’s following me on Instagram, you’ll likely have seen me banging the ‘Instagram is toxic’ drum. Rather justly, I would say. In a world oversaturated with meaningless content (that’s not to say mine is meaningful to all, but at least there’s a story to tell) I feel it’s time for a more content driven and consumer friendly alternative to the Big-Tech giants that are dominating the sharing space. With Instagram recently introducing the ‘Notes’ feature, it’s clear they’re out of ideas, more driven by keeping our attention using dopamine inducing algorithms than on the merit of the content put in front of us.
That’s where a platform like VERO comes in. Allow me to elaborate.
Goliath
How Instagram dominates the market.
I should preface this with the understanding that I have been working in this space for over ten years. I remember what Facebook and Instagram were like as platforms starting out. That my reach is a fraction of what it used to be, with many other creators acknowledging the same, I feel it’s time to shake things up.
Do you remember signing up to Instagram? Most of us signed up to follow friends, creators, the odd celebrity, political figure or intellect we find interesting. Weren’t those the days? Where you, the consumer, were in control of the content you subscribed to. A followed person posted, there it would was on your homepage in chronological order for you to engage with and hop back off the app. That doesn’t make money, though, does it? At least not the billions in revenue Instagram (and it’s parent company, Meta) enjoy now. Instead of being this community driven hub of creativity and meaningful engagement where you see what you want to see, it’s now, to coin a phrase from Peter Mckinnon, “an endless doom scroll until you realize you don’t like the app very much”.
So what happened? In 2021, Instagram had 1.21 billion monthly users; that’s 28% of the world’s internet population. Not bad, hey. When you consider there’s 7 billion people on earth and a huge portion of that is all on one platform, the potential but also the danger of such a technology becomes all too apparent. Instagram deploys hefty AI algorithms to monitor and record content you engage with on their ‘explore’ page. Click on a dog video? More dog videos will appear. Indulge in the narcissism of celebrities? Likewise, more will appear. Sounds great! I get to see more of what I’ve already seen! But you have to consider that it’s directly targetting an addictive part of your psyche, constantly beating you over the head with dopamine inducing shorts that give a quick fix. That, to me, is predatory and not to be encouraged. By watching what keeps you on the platform for as long as possible, the company can target you with the precision of a sniper, pushing content they want you to see while throwing every ad under the sun in between. Not only that, but the human brain develops a dopamine deficit, meaning more and more time has to be spent on the app to get that dopamine ‘fix’.
Now, the argument can be made that we should know better, we should know this and be able to act accordingly. However, this technology is relatively new and so our perhaps primitive brains aren’t adapted to it. Meta knows this; and yet the anti-consumer drive continues. My first photography Instagram account (of which I am now on my third) amassed some 3.5K followers based on the merit of what I was sharing. I used to get work, meet new people for collaborations, and engage endlessly with like-minded folks. These days, the vast majority of engagement seems to come from bots, and my messages are filled with “hey! I never see your stuff any more, how do I fix that?”. That I’m playing tech-support for Instagram is deeply wrong.
Instagram decided somewhere along the way to become an advertising behemoth; turning you, the customer, into the product. Homepages filled with sponsored posts and recommendations from the mighty algorithm. That’s not something any of us should be okay with. After all, it’s true that you become what you engage with. That’s not me saying you’ll become a dog by engaging with dog videos, but you will however be at the mercy of an algorithm that knows you better than you do. 5-second hits create an attention deficit, too. Leaving many unable to focus on anything longer.
To sum it up, Instagram is narcissism in app form. Constantly screaming out for your attention and desperate for you not to leave. All it takes is the realization that this profit driven vacuous mindset is pathetic, and the market can swing to something better. Now, I’m not suggesting Instagram or Meta are doing this intentionally; in fact, I think the opposite is true. They have no idea what they’re doing. They’re trying to fit into the TikTok bubble because, hey, that platform is incredibly successful at manipulating the brain’s dopamine centre, the abuse of our ‘monkey brains’ is a bi-product of a ‘profit and relevance at all costs’ mindset. You see the same with Google and YouTube implementing ‘Shorts’ in the same vein as ‘Reals’ and the overall theme of TikTok. TikTok is its own beast, one that’ll take a lot to tackle because of its intrinsically political motives, which is something I won’t cover here. However I bring it up because we the consumer shouldn’t allow other platforms to follow in TikTok’s wake and instead carve their own path.
Creatives have a big part to play in keeping these spaces just that, creative. It can be so easy to pander to the whims of these giants in the hopes that one day, your post will be the one the algorithm puts out. But posting for the AI isn’t very creative at all. In fact, it’s anti-creative.
David
True social in an anti-social time
I was sceptical about signing up to VERO. I’m quite cynical about things at the best of times, and so the promise of an app that didn’t harvest my data to advertisers and put the content I choose to engage with first… First? That sounded all too good to be true.
Either way, I signed up. First thing I noticed, no adverts. Not one. Pretty cool, I thought to myself. Just an empty homepage prompting me to go and find some people to engage with, and so I did. As I’ve spent time sharing and engaging with this vibrant community, something else struck me. Not a single recommended post has appeared. The only things I engage with are things I choose to. That’s refreshing and actually makes me want to contribute more to the app, so much so I’m writing this very blog post in its favour.
The community, as I say, is vibrant, active and engaging. I so often now receive feedback on what I put out, and do the same for others. It’s like those above in this game leave the ladder down for you and in turn, you do it for those behind you. I love that. Really is a throwback to ten years ago when the idea was sharing for the sake of sharing.
Here’s the homepage on the desktop app (there is a mobile version too which is near identical). If you click on a post it brings up the full quality version of an image which avoids the Instagram compression problems. One of my concerns with that was the ability to steal people’s work but nope, VERO have thought of that, and you can’t save other people’s images on mobile or desktop (I have tried and tested) leaving us open to share our work at the highest quality worry free.
On the theft front, Instagram has an issue with fake accounts being set up. I wanted to reduce the risk of my name and brand being tarnished by getting verified, as I believed that to be the intention of the feature.
As it turns out, Instagram will not verify you unless you are famous. Feeding further into the narcissism problem. Seriously, their reason for not verifying is ‘you are not a substantial enough public figure for verification’.
VERO however, will. My brand and reputation are therefore protected. If the Gordon Cameron that’s messaging you isn’t blue ticked, it isn’t me. Simple.
VERO also allows users to feature other pages they like.
When you go to post on VERO, this is how it looks. Each post formatted correctly to what you’re sharing. This opens the door to more than just photography and video, but writing too. Read a book you loved recently? Share it so others can pick it up along with a review. Film trailer got you hyped? Easily share the link for others to check out.
I love that creative freedom, it means there’s community for everyone, rather than the platform deciding what it is we want to see based on our brain’s love of dopamine fixes.
You can also tailor who sees your posts. The categories are:
Close Friends
Friends
Acquaintances
Followers
This allows for a much more personal experience when interacting with the platform and removes the need for separate accounts for separate kind of posts. Wanna share a picture of your cat for your friends to see? Great! Just share it to your friends. Filmed an epic drone compilation you want all eyes on? Share it to your followers!
For a while, it seemed like big creators were about to jump ship. With the likes of Peter Mckinnon and Chris Hau speaking out against Instagram’s predatory practices in favour of VERO’s ‘user first’ approach. It seems to me they didn’t quite get the pull they were hoping for, in fact a lot of people in this space hit back against them, which has led to near silence on the matter. Strange that people feel the need to defend a multi-billion dollar company like it’s their child but I digress. I made the leap and now feel the need to try and pull more people over. No ads, no bots, no recommendations is enough to make VERO a big player in this space and should excite creatives to the possibilities. Not only that, but if VERO were to become a success, it would encourage the big platforms to think again about what it is their consumers want. Do we want to endlessly scroll into oblivion? Or do we want something that encourages and expresses the innermost desires of human spirit? That, to me, being our intrinsic desire to create and to share that with people, so we might inspire others to do the same.
As you can see above, I have a lot more followers on Instagram. However, I’ve found my organic reach to be far, far better on VERO. The community offers fair and honest feedback on your work and is happy to promote you should you make enough of a splash.
Ever imagined what it would be like if you were there day one on Instagram? Grinding it out trying to make a name for yourself. Well, VERO is in that exact position right now. Who remembers #MOMO? Monochrome Monday was a community challenge on Instagram for such a long time. That kind of thing doesn’t exist on that platform any more, but it does on VERO. Those kinds of things drive the fun and, as I keep saying, gets that community vibe going. There’s no agenda to that, no profit driven ideology behind it, just photographers sharing their brand with the world. I’m the type of guy who shares things just because I enjoy it. That feeling of having real people react to something you’ve created whether it be positive or negative is great!
The biggest feature of VERO and you may want to be sitting down for this one because I don’t know how they implemented it, must have taken years to come up with but… The homepage is in chronological order. Mic drop.
Is social-media the be all and end all? No, of course not. In fact I’d actively encourage anyone serious about this medium to make it tertiary. It’s just a means of reaching a much wider audience or, at least, it used to be. Getting your work seen can be done in a variety of ‘old-school’ ways like prints, going down to a local coffee shop and seeing if they’ll hang your work etc. I’m just addressing the problems I’ve seen arising in this space.
To conclude, it’s a decision between supporting predatory practices and the vacuum of social conformity vs the expression of one’s self and the encouragement from others to do so. A grandiose statement, I know, but would you expect less from yours truly. Human beings are incredibly creative, history proves as much, and what I see happening with platforms like Instagram is a suppression of that. Instead of beauty, we seem to be encouraging self-indulgent content that adds nothing to the day-to-day lives of those who engage with it propped up by a profit driven goliath with no interest in the well-being of those who frequent the platform. If one is posting for likes, the point of content creation and sharing has been missed entirely, and it only serves the ego.
Am I going to stop posting to Instagram? I debate it nearly every time I engage with the platform these days. It’s not producing leads like it used to, and it’s definitely not satisfying to use any more. For now, no. If VERO takes off, then yes, more than likely.
If you’re a creator reading this, I can’t recommend enough that you go and check VERO out. I’m not sponsored by them, I just really believe in an alternative space for us to get our work out there on a platform built around positive customer practices. I don’t know how monetization works on there, but I do know the guys that made it care deeply about their user base, and so it’s worth reaching out to them.
So, if you find yourself downloading it, I’m @gordoncameron. I hope to see you on there!
