Читать книгу Instagram - Tama Leaver, Crystal Abidin - Страница 15

While Mark Zuckerberg has been widely and publicly insistent that Facebook users only have one ‘real’ identity, and should thus only have one ‘real’ Facebook account (Haimson & Hoffmann 2016), Instagram has historically been far more flexible in terms of names, identities and multiple accounts. However, while uniqueness might not have characterized all Instagram users, relatively quickly a certain aesthetic expectation did: Instagram feeds were highly polished and curated, not really spaces for untamed frivolity or silliness. In this context, Finstagrams, or Finstas, emerged; Finstagrams were almost always private accounts, with very low numbers of (trusted) followers, featuring content that was often disruptive, ironic or at odds with the main Instagram aesthetic (such as reposted content, memes and so forth). These led to the main Instagram accounts being redubbed Rinstagrams, or Rinstas, which, were usually public accounts, featuring polished content that were carefully edited to add to a specific look, style or brand. Yet Finstas, to some extent, were swiftly seen as more authentic: in a New York Times piece (Safronova 2015) reporting on the popularity of Finstas, these ‘Fake Instagram’ accounts were specifically characterized as presenting something portrayed as lacking in ‘real’ Instagram: ‘truer version[s] of themselves than their main profiles’. Seemingly endorsing the holding of multiple accounts, addressing different audiences, in February 2016 Instagram added the ability to move between multiple Instagram accounts without having to log out. Switching between Instas and Finstas became a breeze. While Instagram’s owner Facebook consistently argues that there is only one ‘real’ authentic ‘you’ online (van Dijck 2013), Instagram’s promotion of the ease of movement between multiple accounts, and the emergence of prompts to ‘Share a Different Side of Yourself. Create a private account to share photos and videos with a close group of followers’ (see figure 1.1), reveals Instagram is far more supportive of the idea that multiple accounts are needed to address and engage with different groups and contexts (Abidin 2017d).

Figure 1.1. Instagram ‘Create New Account’ popup message, 2017

While one motivation for Instagram’s flexibility is clearly financial – multiple accounts almost certainly means more time on Instagram, more time seeing advertisements and more loyalty to the platform – it is also important to note that the platform is simultaneously more flexible and accommodating to a multiplicity of voices, perspectives and performances by individuals and groups. It’s also a big bonus for social media managers, of course, meaning that multiple people can contribute to and manage a particular brand’s account without having to completely log out of their own personal accounts every time. While Facebook’s real identity policy faced a considerable backlash from queer communities (Newton 2014) and other marginalized groups for whom digital pseudonymity is paramount for personal safety and self-actualization (Holpuch 2015), the company responded to criticism minimally, insisting identities were still singular, but relaxing their policy to allow users to use ‘the name they go by in everyday life’ to ‘keep our community safe’ (Facebook 2018b). On Instagram, multiple accounts are not just tolerated, but actively encouraged, which allows for far more meaningful privacy and audience segmentation. Of course, where privacy is a concern, Finstas are an important strategy for controlling who sees what content on Instagram (Duffy & Chan 2019), yet as early as 2015 popular reporting noted the problem of ‘finsta snitches’ (Safronova 2015) who betrayed the trust of Finsta users, capturing and reposting Finsta content in more mainstream settings, disrupting the users’ attempts to control the contexts in which their content is seen. While Finstas and multiple accounts are thus not perfect in terms of allowing private and more carefully moderated spaces, Instagram’s approach nevertheless is far more flexible and meaningful than is possible on Facebook’s main platform (Highfield & Leaver 2015).