Instagram is stopping the “carpet pull” that causes videos to disappear while you’re watching them

You know that thing where, shortly after you open Instagram and invest in the video that's already loaded, a new video pops up and seemingly throws the old video into the void, never to be seen again? That's a thing of the past, says Instagram boss Adam Mosseri, who said in an AMA from his Instagram Story yesterday that the app is now waiting for you to scroll to show you the new stuff.

This behavior – which Instagram apparently internally called “rug pull” – wasn’t just a strange mistake. Mosseri says the app made it “because we were trying to load new content and it took a while, so we showed you something that had already been downloaded in the meantime and it's generally good for that.” Engagement.”

But it was “really annoying,” he admits, “so we stopped.”

Instagram has “taken a bit of a hit in engagement” for this, Mosseri concludes, saying it's a much better experience for those of us who use the app.