Instagram will remove the "Following" section

Instagram’s Following tab, the activity feed that displays what posts your friends are liking, commenting on, and following, is going away this week. Once the changes go into effect, the heart icon, which currently houses an activity feed for “You” and “Following,” will only display your own activity.

It was definitely the section of Instagram that most exposed users: it is maybe cliché but who knows how many couples break up for a busted like on the following section, to even more complex stories like that of a husband likes his daughters' friends images.

 

According to Instagram’s head of product Vishal Shah, the tab was removed for the sake of simplicity, and to cut down on a feature that most people didn’t know existed:

“People didn’t always know that their activity is surfacing. So you have a case where it’s not serving the use case you built if for, but it’s also causing people to be surprised when their activity is showing up,”

The decision of Instagram is in continuity with the hiding the likes: the goal seems to eliminate possible elements of anxiety (the likes) and control (the following section) to have a greater freedom on digital movements inside of the social. This does not mean that it does not break the fragile but simple architecture of the application in which the "public" part (ie the feed) offers less use incentives to users than the private part (stories, DMs and the newborn Threads), potentially leaving the field open to social media professionals: brands and influencers.