Celebrities and influencers are fed up with Instagram

On Saturday, a small gathering of a dozen or so protesters gathered in front of Meta's offices on Broadway in New York City. On a steamy, hot afternoon, they stood in front of the building with signs that read "we just want to post" and made fun of CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Several people briefly handcuffed themselves to the structure as the protest came to an end and posed for pictures.

The protest's organisers, who run Instagram meme pages and called for modifications to the company's moderation guidelines, claim they are tired of the site. Not everyone is like them.

The last week has seen a significant backlash against recent changes to Instagram's main feed that favour video features and resemble its rival TikTok. This is on top of influencers' growing dissatisfaction with a variety of issues, including how content is moderated and how creators are kept in the dark about changes to the company's algorithm.

An online petition titled Make Instagram Instagram Again was started over the weekend by photographer Tati Bruening, who has over 321,000 followers on the platform. It has garnered nearly 200,000 signatures in just five days. The company is urged to scale back its efforts to imitate TikTok and return to its "roots" by concentrating on photo sharing.

Following posts on Monday from Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, who together have 361 and 326 million Instagram followers, respectively, and who both wield considerable influence on the platform, the backlash against the changes appeared to have reached crisis levels for Instagram. The well-known sisters each posted the exact same meme to their Instagram stories, pleading with the social media site to "Make Instagram Instagram Again."