Instagram Video Post 2

How did you author (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?

For this video, I decided that I would play around with light sources within the black and white frame I had set up for my profile. When trying out the effect of the light going on and off, I thought it worked best when the light from outside flooded in once the lamp switched off. This is why I decided to not use a flash while videoing the lamp (this is the only post on the account where a flash wasn’t used) as the flash lessened the impact and contrast of the sudden shift in light source. Considering the main design feature (and intended affordance) of a lamp is that it lights a room, I wanted to ensure that the difference between on and off was as big of a contrast as possible. And, of course, I added the inkwell filter to the video which further increased the contrast of the videos light and dark areas.

I attempted the multi record feature that instagram offers, but I just couldn’t really find a proper way to utilise it that had purpose behind it, rather than just using it fo the sake of using it. After some reflection, perhaps one thing I could have done was used the multi record to cut between the lamp turning on and off and it’s switch being pressed. Highlighting the switch probably would have been a good way to further incorporate Don Norman’s work on affordances (Norman, 2013), as he often used the affordances accompanying a switch as an example (that a button is designed to be pressed, a toggle to be flipped etc).

How did you publish (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?

So I tried to first publish this video to my prior instagram account and ran into the same problems as before. The video would immediately disappear once the video finished uploading. Once I finally switched accounts however, the video published without error. After a discussion with my tutor Elaine and a bit more research, I think that the initial problem raised in my last image post (and that once again affected this video upload) is possibly due to the Instagram algorithm detecting the kind of content that I was posting to the account in such frequency. Obviously there are lots of ways that Instagram can detect possible spam accounts, spanning from rudimentary to complex. The most common causes of shadow bans are excessive posting (dozens of times in an hour, for example), or liking hundreds of posts in a very small time frame that would be impossible for humans to do manually (Lincoln, 2016). My account, however, wasn’t doing either of these things, so perhaps the algorithm that Instagram employs is also targeting the specific content, rather than just the user behaviour of the account. In this case, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it flagged my initial account, because the content I was posting could easily be mistaken for some sort of shopping profile (clean, simple photos of single objects, one filter applied across the whole profile, brand names in the hashtags etc). This, coupled with my sudden flurry of posting on a brand new account, could possibly have triggered some sort of Instagram algorithm into action, mistaking my profile for a spam shop account. It would be relatively ironic if the very strategies I employed to make the account more design focused and (I had hoped) more interesting, ended up making it seem like a standard bot on instagram.

The one thing I cannot figure out though, is why it flagged the first account and not the second account. I uploaded exactly the same photos with the same quotes and hashtags on my new account, all within a couple days of the first account being suspended / shadow banned / whatever Instagram employed to stop the uploads.

How did you distribute (the photo or video) you published on Instagram to other social media services?

As with my other videos, distribution across tumblr and twitter occurred simultaneously with the other accounts. There was, however, an unintended consequence of the failed uploads. Somehow, Instagram still crossposted all the failed attempts at uploading this video, despite the fact that they wouldn’t upload to instagram. They only uploaded to tumblr though, for whatever reason they didn’t work with twitter, but registered as several separate uploads on tumblr. At the very least, it proves that the upload itself wasn’t failing, and it was definitely an intentional action on behalf of the instagram app to prevent the uploads on my first account.

 

References:

Lincoln, J. (2020). Uncovering the Dirty World of Instagram Spam Bots, How They Work. [online] Inc.com. Available at: https://www.inc.com/john-lincoln/uncovering-the-dirty-world-of-instagram-spam-bots-how-they-work.html [Accessed 23 Feb. 2020].

Norman, D. (2013). The design of everyday things. New York: Basic Books.

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