Oh, Instagram. The ease of posting photos, tagging subjects, and adding appropriate hashtags is what attracts so many people to the app. You can build a huge following for yourself, one that you would not have been able to create using Facebook or Twitter. That, however, could change very soon.

Since Facebook bought Instagram back in 2012, users have had to deal with their fair share of unwanted additions, mainly ads and notifications that the kid who sat two seats behind you in your junior year English class is now on Instagram. This wasn't terribly annoying, in fact nobody really cared that much, but now Instagram is planning a big change that will change the entire app for the worse. Similar to Facebook's current setup, Instagram will now display posts in an algorithmic fashion vs. their usual reverse-chronological one. This doesn't seem too bad until you realize that all those indie brands you follow, all the friends who don't post very often but appreciate the occasional "like" from you on their selfies, all of them will essentially be gone.

You see, the Instagram algorithm will allow Instagram to pick what you get to see, based on what it thinks you would like to see the most. This is essentially based off of the attention that a particular post is getting, and the attention that a particular user has gotten from you in the past. If you "like" every single photo that your favorite singer with a million followers posts, you'll get to see every update from them as soon as you open the app.

The point of this change is what confuses me most. Currently, if you don't like what someone posts, you unfollow them, and therefore never see their photos again. If you like someone so much that you want to "like" as many of their photos as possible, you check up on their profile periodically, or even turn on the option to receive notifications when they post. What about all the users that you love to see posts from on your feed, but you never actually "like" their photos? What about all the users with smaller amounts of followers that don't have a big enough chance to receive "likes?" Once the popular posts are put at the top of your feed, over time, you will "like" those users' posts more than ever, and "like" your secondary users' posts less than ever, skyrocketing the popular users to even higher popularity, and the less popular users to even lower popularity.

This change negatively affects small companies and artists in particular. As an artist who has built her career through Instagram, this change worries me deeply. I know that most of my followers also follow the musicians who I tend to draw. These musicians have way more followers than I do, and my followers interact with their posts much more than they do with mine. As a result, my art could disappear from their feeds completely.

Small companies, particularly indie makeup brands, are also worried about the change. For example, I follow a brand called Black Moon Cosmetics, as well as Urban Decay. Black Moon Cosmetics has 124,000 followers, while Urban Decay has 4.7 million followers. I don't interact with either account very much, but as soon as I "like" a photo Urban Decay posts, I will suddenly see Urban Decay pop up on my feed way more often than Black Moon Cosmetics. What if I wanted to see Black Moon Cosmetics' posts? The fact that I "liked" a photo from Urban Decay doesn't mean that I don't care about Black Moon Cosmetics!

Essentially, this change will turn your feed into a huge popularity contest. You may be thinking, "But Instagram already is a popularity contest!" Maybe so, but at least with the current setup you still had the option to interact with whomever you wanted to.

If you would like to show Instagram that you like it just the way it is, please sign this petition!