{"id":116388,"date":"2019-01-02T17:44:47","date_gmt":"2019-01-02T17:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/en\/?p=116388"},"modified":"2025-07-01T22:35:02","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T05:35:02","slug":"instagram-glitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/instagram-glitch\/","title":{"rendered":"What the hell happened to Instagram over the holidays?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"instagram\"<\/p>\n

You may have missed it, but Instagram had a bit of a meltdown over the holiday period. For a period of a few hours, everything went a little crazy over at Instagram HQ when a small test was accidentally released to a wider audience. People were not happy, and it wasn\u2019t long before the whole incident was trending on Twitter. Let\u2019s take a look at exactly what happened in a bit more detail.<\/p>\n

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Instagram briefly introduced horizontal scrolling and it was horrible<\/h2>\n

It was Thursday, December 27, and poor unsuspecting Instagram users were picking up their phones to check what their buddies had been up to the night before. What they found was an alternate-universe Instagram that totally sucked. After they\u2019d looked at that first post, sitting gloriously atop their Instagram timeline, rather scrolling down as normal, their timelines scrolled horizontally to the left.<\/p>\n

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I have the new Instagram horizontal scroll interface. I\u2019m sure this will not be met with any backlash WHATSOEVER. But seems maybe intended to reduce mindless vertical scrolling? cc @mosseri<\/a> comments at the end ? pic.twitter.com\/fwmtbfjFaf<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Alex Heath (@alexeheath) December 27, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was worse than that. Instagram was pushing instructions telling them to tap through the posts on their timeline, just like they do when they are looking through Instagram Stories. Users double-checked to make sure that they weren\u2019t in fact looking at Instagram Stories, and then panicked. It wasn\u2019t a mistake. It was all really happening. Their beloved Instagram had mutated beyond recognition. If they wanted to see all of the posts in their timeline, they\u2019d have to deal with nausea and scroll from right to left.<\/p>\n

I have to admit, I was one of those poor Instagram users who was completely thrown by this ridiculous curveball. I didn\u2019t know what to do with myself, so I took to Twitter to vent my frustration, but never got the chance. I quickly found the #instagramupdate, which was the number trending hashtag in the U.S. and my fellow Instagrammers cheered me up with their outrage.<\/p>\n

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THE NEW INSTAGRAM UPDATE IS ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE! @INSTAGRAM<\/a> WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, OH MY GOSH! By far the worst update in Instagram history! #instagram<\/a> #instagramupdate<\/a> #insta<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/KMuFDXRkQv<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Elise Michelle (@elisemichellex) December 27, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Who at Instagram thought this update was a good idea? I\u2019m legit forced to stop and look at other people\u2019s post instead of sliding down #Instagram<\/a> #instagramupdate<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 6flex (@neahxblackwood) December 27, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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So not only is the feed on #Instagram<\/a> nowhere near chronological, now I gotta swipe to get through pictures?! pic.twitter.com\/5bn40d4QVs<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Tyler Smay (@T_Smay) December 27, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The most hilarious thing about the whole affiar is that what annoyed everybody the most was the fact that the new horizontal scrolling forced them to actually pay attention to other people\u2019s post, rather than mindlessly scrolling from top to bottom.<\/p>\n

Then, before I even had a chance to post my own thoughts on the matter, Instagram had fixed the issue, put everything back the way it should be, and released a statement, saying, \u201cDue to a bug, some users saw a change to the way their feed appears today. We quickly fixed the issue and feed is back to normal. We apologize for any confusion.\u201d It was all over before it had ever really started.<\/p>\n

The ironic thing about the whole episode is that Instagram was likely testing the new feature as a way to battle the mindless scrolling that users rushed to Twitter to defend.<\/p>\n

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Instagram briefly introduced horizontal scrolling and it was horrible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9073,"featured_media":114722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[2354,1051,1040,1035],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-116388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-app-subdomain-redirectioninstagram","tag-instagram","tag-messaging-apps","tag-social-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9073"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326839,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116388\/revisions\/326839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116388"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=116388"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=116388"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=116388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}