Instagram show sales pitch

Social media promised to bring humans closer together. We could connect with friends from across the globe and see what they were up to through images, text, and video. It’s safe to say it’s fallen a bit flat on that promise, though this is likely due to the nature of the society we find ourselves in (we are the production, our attention must be commoditized, etc.). I’m not going to continue to toot that horn because that narrative is well known and a bit played out at this point.

Instead, I’m going to talk about my current experience as an Instagram user, and social media more broadly. I used to get DMs from a wide range of people, suggesting ideas, reaching out about design, or just saying hi. Now, most of my DMs are scams or sales pitches to “boost my account” or something to that effect. This got me thinking… what if Instagram could detect and indicate when a DM is actually just a sales pitch?

This is probably not unhinged enough to belong in my repository of content, but it’s an idea I had, and I do think LLMs would get enough messages wrong initially that it would ruin some potential relationships (personal or professional) before they ever start. That said, this paired with better spam filters would be amazing to have.

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