Technology
Facebook Makes Moves on Instagram’s Users
The power dynamic between the social media platform and its photo-sharing app is shifting.
This article is for subscribers only.
In late June, Spencer Chen got an unusual notification from Instagram. The app prompted him to check out a friend’s new photo—on Facebook. Chen grabbed a screenshot and posted the notification on the internet, calling it a cry for attention by the older social network. It felt like a cheap trick, he says, like “placating big brother in the Facebook building.”
Chen is one of the tens of millions of people who used Instagram before Facebook Inc. acquired the photo-sharing app in 2012. Ever since, he says, he has anticipated the day when Facebook would start messing with the photo app to suit its needs. That day, he says, has come.