We want Instagram to split off

Right now there’s a lot of discourse around whether Instagram should be split from Meta.

On Sharp Tech Ben Thompson made an impassioned argument for why logically it shouldn’t happen. I agree. When Facebook bought Instagram it was at a time when their future was uncertain, and the entire sentiment around them was that the company was headed downward.

We expected them to lose.

Up to that point social networks just died off. Remember MySpace? Friendster? We understood a natural rhythm to the way such websites would evolve and ultimately die. It was time for the next one and we were done with the old one. That blue logo was feeling old and worn out. Time to go.

Instagram, of course, had all the excitement and energy. Ironically, despite its incredible name recognition at the time, fewer people were using it than I’d have expected.

So Facebook buying it felt unfair, because it was their time to die off. They were cheating death. They were living past their welcome.

What Mark and team have done is to defy death. Time and again they’ve found a way to stay relevant, evolve with the times, buy out or copy whatever they need to do to stay around.

So, looking back, with the benefit of hindsight, we see one of the largest companies in the world still winning, a changed social landscape, and a general disatisfaction with the fact that Zuck just keeps shifting where needed—he’s acting like a founder; even when we feel emotionally that he should have just enjoyed his winnings and gone off to take photos.

That feeling then, that desire for the courts to split up Instagram, comes from a general uneasiness around a juggernaught winning time and again. I agree with Ben that had I or anyone else predicted this we’d be billionares. Buying Facebook stock at $19 looks pretty sweet right now. So technically, the case against Meta matters less than the feeling we’re sensing right now, rooting for an underdog to win.

And that might just be the problem. I remember the days when I enjoyed using Instagram. I’d post pictures of my kids, see great photography and art from people I enjoyed following, and considered it the calm social network. That’s changed now. The Instagram we use is so vastly different than the early iterations that it really should be called a different name. Instavid just doesn’t have the same ring to it, but it’d be more accurate.

As a designer who creates software for a living, builds things that people will use, and tries to instill delight into interfaces and UX flows, Instagram seems to defy all that’s good and just give the people what they want—which in 2025 is unlimited shortform rage bait video.

Maybe it’s not what we should have, but it’s what we do have. And that’s the nostalgia kicking in, part of me wants Instagram to split off in hopes of a different social network coming to live and maybe—just maybe—bringing back the good old days. Of course that will never happen.