Instagram’s Following tab, the activity feed that displays what posts your friends are liking, commenting on, and following, is going away this week. The company quietly removed the tab for some users starting in August, and Instagram confirmed to BuzzFeed News today that the feature will be phased out 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.
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,” Shah told BuzzFeed News.
It’s true that the Following tab has been a source of conflict for a lot of friendships and relationships. Who hasn’t felt the heartbreak of waiting for someone to text you back, and going on Instagram only to discover that the person was busy liking photos of Jeff Goldblum? This is a change that’s probably for the better.
