Unable to Switch Station. Hourly Limit Reached. Try Again in a Few Minutes.

RIP Marking Zuckerberg'south "time well spent"? In a motility that appears to coincide with Facebook/Meta reporting slowing growth, photo-sharing app Instagram appears to take quietly removed the ability for mobile users to set a lower daily fourth dimension limit reminder than 30 minutes.

Indeed, the app's UX design nudges people to cull a iii hour 'limit' (see screengrab below).

This daily fourth dimension limit setting pops up a notification to the user one time their app activity hits their preferred limit, reminding them to be conscious of how much fourth dimension they are spending on the app — and maybe making it easier for them to cull to quit out of the app voluntarily.

Instagram'south daily time limit setting puts "3 hours" in the tiptop slot — burial lower bachelor limits (Screengrab: TechCrunch)

Previously the visitor supported a user-defined limit for Instagram that could be as depression as fifteen minutes — or fifty-fifty x minutes — per day, when it was making a big PR push to propose that more 'mindful' usage of its services was possible, equally business over social media habit surged.

But information technology seems the attending-loving adtech giant now wants Instagram users to spend longer eyeballing content feeds on the photo- and video-sharing platform where it tin cash in by targeting them with ads. Which could be a result of force per unit area from the business side to eke out growth…

In its earnings earlier this month, Meta reported apartment quarter-over-quarter usage for its eponymous app (Facebook) — and almost flat growth for its other apps, which it wraps into a "family unit of apps" moniker, rather than breaking out Instagram, WhatsApp etc usage individually. (Daily agile users of this 'other apps' category rose from 2.81BN in Q3 to 2.82BN in Q4; while monthly active users rose from three.58BN in Q3 to 23.59BN in Q4; but usage of Facebook itself stayed entirely flat, quarter-over-quarter, at i.93BN DAUs and 2.91BN MAUs.)

The disappointing Q4 results wiped 20% off the visitor's value when they hit — which could be one reason why Meta's growth teams may be seeing what levers they can tweak to drive engagement from existing users.

TechCrunch was alerted to the Instagram settings change past an tipster who shared screenshots of their business relationship (come across pics below) which show the company nudging them to "set a new value for your daily limit" — because, as it puts it, "the available daily limits are irresolute as function of an app update". (Full marks to Meta for penning a sentence that fails to contain any meaningful caption of why information technology'south making capricious changes to limit users' control.)

This user had previously specified a x infinitesimal daily limit. However they're at present of a sudden being informed this option is no longer available — and, presumably, any users who had not yet specified a daily limit or had picked a different (higher) limit would be unlikely to even realize that the ten infinitesimal choice had been deprecated.

And while Instagram's notification to the user of this alter to daily limits does state that they tin retain their current 10 minute limit, the app uses blatant dark patterns to nag them into changing it — including by popping upwards a notification right above the 10 minute limit that's indicated on their "time on Instagram" settings folio, which further instructs: "This value is no longer supported. Please edit" — all of which is clearly designed to make them think they do actually have to switch to a higher limit.

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"My choice has gone away, and if I attempt and change information technology, my onetime minimum of 10 minutes triples to xxx minutes equally the new minimum," the tipster told TechCrunch.

The source, who preferred to remain anonymous, likened this silent switch to "a tobacco visitor maxim you lot can limit your packs a day, as it takes away smaller packs".

"They don't strength the alter but if go into the edit screen as information technology tells you to, then you lot have to force quit the app to leave without changing information technology," they added.

Nosotros've recently seen Facebook/Meta using a similarly manipulative persistent notification tactic when trying to push a policy update on WhatsApp users in the face of a major T&Cs backlash — which has led to an (ongoing) consumer protection probe in the EU. But the company has a long, ignoble history of this sort of stuff. And then none of this is surprising. Simply ofc that doesn't make it okay.

It's getting harder for companies like Meta to pull the wool, though. Oversight bodies are wising upwardly to dark patterns. See for instance — again in European Union — lawmakers in the parliament who recently overwhelmingly backed putting explicit restrictions on such manipulative tactics into upcoming rules set to apply widely to digital platforms.

And then the scope for platforms to profit off of cynically self-serving defaults (or "bachelor" settings) looks to be shrinking.

Our tipster wasn't sure exactly when the 10 minute option they had been able to select previously was discontinued — but they told u.s.a. the app had been "nagging for a couple of weeks" to press them to "edit" the setting.

We also checked what we could come across ourselves to confirm this change applied more widely than to a unmarried Instagram user — and plant that 30 minutes seems to be the new 'norm' for app users.

A US-based TechCrunch reporter found the app also only offers them 30 minutes as the lowest bachelor daily limit.

As with the tipster, the top option this user was presented with in the list of available times — and thus the pick they're most likely to discover, from a UX design point of view — was "3 hours" (aka 6x 30 minutes).

Another UK-based TCer who checked their app could likewise only select xxx minutes equally the lowest daily limit for the notification on their Instagram.

Interestingly, the movie looked different on the Facebook mobile app. There the options offered to a TechCrunch reporter based in France technically included "0 hours, 0 minutes" — although that did non work when selected. However they were able to select a 5 infinitesimal limit (rising in 5 infinitesimal increments thereafter) then it looks as if the 30 minute minimum may non have been practical to the Facebook mobile app by Meta (yet).

Nosotros were also able to ostend that another U.k.-based Facebook mobile app user could select a 5 minute minimum on that app.

Nosotros asked Meta to confirm any changes it has fabricated to the Instagram daily limits setting — also as putting a number of other related questions to it — only at the fourth dimension of writing the visitor had non responded.

The company finally sent a statement — around eleven hours after we asked nigh this; it was a US vacation today but this filibuster does underline how another of Meta'south "global" platforms remains locked to US-based comms and U.s.a.-centric decisions — run into the lesser of this post for the statement and our update.

Facebook garnered a lot of press back in 2018 when, with business organisation surging over the impact of social media platforms on teenagers' mental health — it announced it was giving Instagram and Facebook users new "time management tools" — which included the ability to set a (soft) daily time on usage. Users would besides be able to view a daily average of time spent on the mobile app, based on a week's usage.

"We desire the time people spend on Instagram and Facebook to be intentional, positive and inspiring," Ameet Ranadive, product direction director at Instagram and David Ginsberg, managing director of research at Facebook, wrote as they introduced the bundle of time management features. "Our hope is that these tools give people more control over the fourth dimension they spend on our platforms and also foster conversations between parents and teens about the online habits that are correct for them."

The characteristic launch was linked to a wider company push — starting around 2022 — when it appeared to engage publicly with concerns about the negative impacts of social media.

However Facebook did and so by seeking to reframe the narrative by suggesting any issues with usage are incremental and manageable (i.e. rather than existential for its attention-dependent business organization) — merely and then long as the user has "tools" to support what it dubbed "meaningful social interactions".

Hence the flotilla of tweaks and "controls" Facebook/Meta went on to announce — offer cocky-serving 'fixes' to address societal concerns about social media usage, with the aim of preventing users actually stopping the habit entirely.

Of course these controls rarely — if ever — actually put users in control. Moreover the underlying content ranking algorithms actively undermine user autonomy by optimizing for profit-maximizing 'date' — as Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, went on to detail in hours of detailed testimony to lawmakers last twelvemonth.

The Instagram daily time limit feature, for example, was a lot more mindfulness theatre than meaningful control right from the become go — since users just got a notification if/when they reached their desired daily time, rather than the app taking firmer action similar actually locking them out until the next day.

Equally Haugen has testified, Facebook has demonstrated a systematic unwillingness to requite upwards little slivers of profitability in service of a greater skilful (aka the welfare of its users/society) — up to and including, it now seems, letting Instagram users select a 10 minute soft limit on their usage. Which would permit for fewer ads to exist served vs a thirty minute minimum — which ways less profit for Meta…

And so the visitor'southward claim of trying to deliver 'time well spent' on its platforms looks to have by its sell by engagement: Another hollow publicity stunt to purchase Fb time while its growth teams pulsate upward new UX hacks to keep the eyeballs busy.

(On the flip side, information technology's interesting to consider the recent popularity of viral word game, Wordle, whose creator suggested it should only be played for 3 minutes a mean solar day when he spoke to the BBC last month — while the app itself hard-limits the game to one puzzle per day.)

In whatsoever example, the argue near regulating powerful tech platforms has moved on considerably since 2022 — with tech giants like Meta now facing the prospect of difficult limits on how they tin operate, via incoming regulation such as the EU's Digital Markets Act. Or the UK's Age Appropriate Design Code which seeks to safeguard the welfare of children past enforcing strict privacy defaults and standards, and imposing other restrictions such as fourth dimension limits on when platforms tin can message child users.

So if the secret of your ad-platform'due south growth is dark blueprint blueprint and manipulative messaging — not to mention anti-competitive surveillance — so your investors do, certainly, have reasons for concern.

Update:In the statement responding to our questions, Meta claimed the removal of "daily limit" limits that are shorter than xxx minutes is related to the launch of newer time management characteristic, which it calls "Take A Intermission" — saying information technology wanted to avoid sending people multiple notifications at the aforementioned time.

Hither's the statement in full:

"Nosotros have ii time direction features. Our existing 'daily limit' shows you a notification when yous've hit your daily limit, but our newest feature 'Accept A Suspension' shows you lot full-screen reminders to get out the app, and includes 10 minute intervals. Nosotros changed the 'daily limit' options to avoid sending people multiple notifications at the same time."

This raises a number of new questions — such as why Instagram'due south notifications to our tipster, nudging them to prepare a new (college) daily fourth dimension limit than 10 minutes, did non at the very to the lowest degree inform them of (or even link them to!) the beingness of the Take A Break feature?

And why a setting that is marketed equally providing users with greater control over their Instagram usage should — in do — lead to a user feeling they like have less control, given it keeps nudging them to remove their self-selected time limit without properly informing them of relevant alternatives.

In any instance, the wider point about shape-shifting, self-serving settings is that e'er iterating user controls which require users to track incremental platform updates in full dimension particular do the polar opposite of putting users in control.

Instead the person whose settings take, yet once again, beingness reset or otherwise reconfigured must constantly work to understand the updated 'version' of command they are now beingness offered — at the very least learning to navigate a new menu interface. And if they don't practise that — say they feel also tired to practice the research required to grok even so another choosy settings alter — they take chances being reset back to a lower level of command vs what they may have previously specified.

Facebook has infamously used this tactic with privacy settings over its long years of user-hostile design choices — notoriously flipping access to content that users had expressly told information technology should remain limited to being viewable past "friends only" (for example) to opening access to make their stuff entirely public on a totally global service.

Damaging, resetting defaults and function-shifting settings are the very bread and butter of dark pattern pattern.

"Take A Pause" slots neatly into this ignoble tradition.

It appears to have been first mentioned by Instagram back in a September 2022 blog post — when the company wrote that the feature had "tentatively" been given that name; and said the idea for it is to enable users to "put their account on interruption and accept a moment to consider whether the time they're spending is meaningful". (The blog post did not actually specify what "Take A Break" would do. God forbid the visitor were to really inform its users in plain English language how something works!)

Agreement these ever iterating new features — or new user control mechanisms, as they really are — is typically left to the tech printing. Which means many publications generate a lot of coverage but by explaining the nuance.

This is oft very helpful to Meta from a PR bespeak of view, given it can routinely look huge attention to the quotidian detail of incremental characteristic tweets/launches — which works to suck the oxygen out of the room/backbite attention from more meaningful critiques of the platform giant — like why Zuckerberg continues to have absolute monarchy levels of power over what Meta does via his majority voting shares; or whether Meta'southward tools are busy right now whipping upwards another indigenous massacre.

But dorsum to the particular of "Take A Break".

Instead of a elementary setting that notifies users when their app usage hits their cocky configured limit — and maybe offers them a single, big red button to 'Shut App' — Take A Interruption offers a far more than staged and controlled version of the concept of a usage limit. At a glance, this looks generally intended to quickly convince the user to return to the condolement of passive scrolling in the app, owing to a curated option of alternative suggestions Meta presents in bolder, darker text (vs only a faint gray text where it suggests they "take a moment to reset past closing Instagram").

CNN covered Have A Interruption in a video back in December — and the listed suggestions that appear in its video don't seem optimized to actively discourage more content grazing in its app. Far from it. Some indeed may take the opposite effect ("do something on your to-do list", for example, sounds a helluva a lot similar piece of work; while "accept a few deep breaths" sounds similar something you could literally spent a few seconds doing and then feel as if that's job done, intermission over and back to scrolling on Instagram…

Additionally, every bit CNN's reporter pointed out, the characteristic'due south 10 minute limit is sneaky. It is not a hard limit on daily usage — it's just a resetting pop upward that ultimately encourages you to shut it and go dorsum to the app like every other tedious pop-up that the data industrial adtech complex routinely (and — at least in Europe — illegally) sicks onto the web.

And if you do take Instagram upward on one of the listed "Have A Break" suggestions, and really switch away from the app — say so you can fire up Spotify to "heed to your favorite song" — Meta wins again considering the app's interruption counter resets dorsum to zero! So it'southward not actually a daily x minute limit at all!

Really, "Have A Break" is a very dissimilar, far more manipulative feature than "Daily Limit" — one that looks intended to groom users into feeling every bit if they're taking a break while simultaneously working to minimize how much time they actually stop using the app. A few breaths of 'time out' or a couple of seconds "writ[ing] down what you're thinking" — or even a infinitesimal or ii listening to a pop song — is all Meta says your eyeballs need earlier it serves up the side by side batch of ads.

Frankly y'all can't reform this level of nighttime blueprint.

The cynicism is then utterly pitch it should take its own result horizon.

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Source: https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/21/instagram-limits-daily-time-limits/

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