Yesterday, Instagram tested the patience of some of their users when they temporarily discontinued the scrolling feature, forcing users to tap or swipe to get to the next item in their feed. Users revolted and Instagram apologized, promising to revert to the old feed. The incident was described as an accidental expansion of a test, rather than an announced permanent redesign.

The “Horizontal” Swipe

The test appeared without advance notice to the affected users. It appeared on updated iPhones only briefly. According to several user reports, the horizontal swipe or tap worked a lot like Instagram stories. Instagram intended a small test, but a bug exposed the change more widely. TIME reported Mosseri’s explanation and Instagram’s statement that the issue had been fixed and the normal feed restored. The company did not give an affected-user total in that statement.

Backlash

Twitter served as the main platform for lodging complaints against Instagram, which soon turned into a Tweetstorm. Users likened the experience to that of Tinder and flat out refused to adapt, starting hashtag campaigns such as #instagramupdate.

Has Instagram lost its mind? I am not tinder swiping through everyone’s posts ?? #instagramupdate
— dan hardy (@therushahead) December 27, 2018

https://twitter.com/davidmackau/status/1078313474231545856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1078313474231545856&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F12%2F27%2Ftechnology%2Finstagram-update-horizontal-scroll.html https://twitter.com/KuritaKian/status/1078311724783042560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1078311724783042560&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Ftechnology-46693741 Some users even asked for former CEO Kevin Systrom and Chief Technical Officer Mike Krieger to return to Facebook to prevent the destruction of Instagram, which Facebook acquired six years ago. Mosseri was put in charge of Instagram in October after serving as their vice president of product and the head of Facebook’s news feed feature. https://twitter.com/mosseri/status/1078323616486350848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1078323616486350848&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Ftechnology-46693741 Receiving unprecedented backlash over the new feature, Instagram rolled the change back. The debacle was amusing to many Instagram users. https://twitter.com/michaelbrown_10/status/1078319432454365185?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1078319432454365185&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Ftechnology-46693741 Instagram said in a statement:

“Due 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.”

Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 for one billion dollars. At that point, the app had around 40 million users. Over time, Facebook has made huge changes to the app, such as adding videos and the Insta Stories feature. Facebook also introduced the idea of ad revenue collection through Instagram. In June, Instagram had made 5.5 billion dollars in ad revenue in the US in 2018 alone. Instagram has now reached one billion users. Their user base is second only to Facebook, which has 2 billion people who log in every month. Apparently, the powers that be thought this innovation to help consolidate the user bases. But they learned the hard way that some product ideas should remain just that – ideas.