What has social media come to?

I've spent over 20 years working with social media platforms, from the days of Bebo, MySpace, last.fm and early LinkedIn. I've had a front row seat to how this all played out. The early days were genuinely exciting. These platforms felt like open spaces where anyone could connect, share ideas, and find their people without a corporation deciding who saw what. That version exists mostly in memory now. What's replaced it has, in a lot of cases, been shown to do real damage to how people see themselves and each other, while also becoming the primary way millions of people stay in contact with the ones they care about. Both things are true, which makes it complicated.

My own relationship with these platforms has become almost entirely professional. I keep my Instagram and Facebook accounts because the job sometimes requires it, not because I get anything from using them. I use LinkedIn for work but largely avoid my feed. The substance is too hard to find amid all the slop. The feed is a mix of AI-generated filler, content designed to provoke a reaction, and an algorithm that seems to have decided what I think before I've finished a sentence. The one place I still genuinely use is Reddit, and I think it's because communities there set their own rules rather than deferring entirely to an algorithm. It's not perfect, but it feels more like a conversation and less like a system trying to keep me angry enough to keep scrolling.

Which brings me to Instagram Plus. For $3.99 a month, you get features like seeing who viewed your story before it expires and the ability to suppress posts from people you already chose to follow. That second one is doing a lot of work. The ability to quietly filter your own feed used to just be called managing your social life. Now it's a subscription tier. I get why people will pay for it. When the free experience has been gradually made worse, paying to make it functional again feels like the only option. That's not an accident.

I don't think Instagram Plus is the thing that fixes any of this. It's a product decision dressed up as a feature launch, and after two decades of watching how these platforms evolve, I can say with some confidence that the free version will keep getting noisier while the paid one promises just enough quiet to feel worth it.