Instagram stops the ‘rug pull’ that disappears videos while you’re watching them

You know that thing where, just after you’ve opened Instagram and become invested in whatever video was already loaded, a new video pops in and seemingly yeets the old video into the void, never to be seen again? That’s a thing of the past, according to Instagram boss Adam Mosseri, who says in an AMA from his Instagram Story yesterday that the app now waits for you to scroll to show you the new stuff.

That behavior — which Instagram apparently called “rug pull” internally — wasn’t just some weird bug. Mosseri says the app did it “because we were trying to load new content, and it was taking a while, so we showed you something that was already downloaded in the meantime, and it is generally good for engagement.”

But that’s “really annoying,” he acknowledges, “so we stopped doing it.”

Instagram has taken “a little bit of an engagement hit for this,” Mosseri concludes, saying it’s a much better experience for those of us using the app.

Agreed.