I think it's two aspects - one is that Insta started out as the "not-facebook" platform and Meta's somehow managed not to fuck that up, and the other is there's a massive network effect - every tattoo artist, venue, and band are on instagram now, and it all becomes very self-reinforcing.

They're trying... They finally released a native iPad version of the app this year (after so many years), and its default pane is not the one that includes people you actually follow (like the phone app) - it's just reels, and you have to go looking for the right page in the menu to see anything from people you care about.

It's very revealing about where they wish they could have taken the app already, where you don't follow anyone, just trust the algorithm to force-feed you content. Doing that too quickly would instantly kill it, so it's been years of boiling the frog.

The 'Snooze suggested content in feed for 30 days' thing is already bad enough, if they stopped letting you do that Instagram would be insufferable to use.

> Meta's somehow managed not to fuck that up

But then they fucked up. Several years ago.