I joined Instagram in 2015 as an artist trying to make it on yet another social media platform. Since then it has only been downhill from there. I am speaking on behalf of the art community but I’m sure many other communities on Instagram will agree that this platform is doing no good for us and is only harming our mental health as of recently. The new and ever changing algorithm has taken away views, likes and reach from our posts which are hard enough to promote as it is, there have been far too many cases where reporting accounts and posts has done nothing despite there being active pedophiles, hate groups and pornography on the site easily accessible to children, they are showing people triggering things in the explore page instead of the posts and interests they actually want to see, they’re hiding peoples posts from others, and they are constantly updating Instagram with useless things like new font and reels instead of actually listening to the people using the app and changing it to benefit the people keeping the app alive at all. As an artist, I feel like Instagram is one of the only places to share my art and my passion and that is extremely important to me and many other artists because that can possibly be the leapfrog to a bigger company or job, can be used as a portfolio or can be used to express how proud we are of the work we create and share it with others for fun. But how can we do any of this when a platform almost a billion people rely on keeps sabotaging us? I know so many people who feel worthless, useless and appalled by their art because of what Instagram is putting on people and I have had enough. Bring back the platform I wanted to join, not the one I’m on the verge of boycotting.