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Sometime last year, Instagram changed its bottom menu bar to the following:
Bookended by the home button and the user profile button are now video reels, DMs, and the explore page. The create a new post button, which was formerly here in the center, was moved up to the top of the screen in a far less conspicuous place. These changes felt weird at first, but they were, of course, based on real user data. What people do on Instagram these days is watch reels and then share them with their friends. The era of posting beautiful square photos with nice filter edits died a long time ago.
But even today's world of video reels and TikTok videos is in massive flux. AI is flooding the system, and it's impossible to know what is "real" anymore. The name of the game with social media used to be authenticity. This is how individuals gained distribution control from institutions and large brands; they were more real and authentic. But today, we are in a world where AI-generated content can be entirely indistinguishable from "real" or captured content.
I have felt this change myself. As someone who has been a hobby photographer since undergrad some 20+ years ago, I have noticed myself grabbing my Fujifilm camera a lot less over the last year. Instead, I've just been using my phone and spending more time playing around with AI. And, of course, it's not just me. I see my architect and real estate friends using AI to test concepts, create presentation renderings, and more. So, where does all of this leave a platform like Instagram that was designed around individuals creating and sharing their own content?
A few days ago, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, published these twenty slides about how the company sees the world as we head into 2026. They're an interesting read because they mark a shift in messaging. Previously, the narrative was all about connecting the world and empowering creators. Now it's about labeling, mediating, and controlling this new world. In the words of Silicon Valley journalist and entrepreneur Om Malik, "deep down, Instagram is frightened."
But there is a path forward (excerpt also from Malik):
It starts by verifying who is behind an account, embedding provenance in media, and rewarding trust signals. Over time, Meta may tighten control and aim to be an identity broker for everyone. Instagrams want [sic] you to be prepared for this new era of tighter control over identity, authenticity, and content provenance.
One of the most important slides in Mosseri's post for me is this one here:
I've been arguing for years that crypto has an important role to play in a world filled with AI. When nobody knows what is "real" anymore, there's value in being able to say with finality that, hey, this thing over here is authentic and comes from this source. Social media (web2) showed us that people would rather tie something back to an individual instead of a large faceless brand. AI is disrupting this chain of provenance, but I think crypto will bring us back to it, somehow. Whether Instagram will be a part of it, of course, remains to be seen.
Cover photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
If you have an iPhone 15 Pro (and iOS 17.2), you can go into Settings -> Camera -> Formats and turn on a setting called "spatial video." It will then enable this (excerpt from Om Malik):
Spatial video is a mixed-reality video format that allows videos to record the depth and spatial information of the scene, and when you play it back, you get a more immersive, three-dimensional (3D) experience. The iPhone 15 Pro utilizes its main lens and the ultra-wide lens to capture the depth and spatial information of the videos. The spatial videos are captured at 1080p, 30 frames per second, and use the HEIC format.
What you can then do is watch your videos on something like an Apple Vision Pro. It's not going to be exactly perfect right now -- given that the Vision Pro display is over 8k and the above is 1080p -- but it will give you an indication of what's to come for photography, video, and many other use cases.
Some examples.
As a regular consumer, this might allow you to capture videos from a trip and then more fully relive the moments once you're at home. And as Om argues in his post, this will inevitably change photography/video. Because how we consume media, impacts how and what we capture.
If you're in the business of selling real estate to people, you can also imagine this set up having a profound impact on virtual tours. Because now you have something that's pretty damn close to reality, if not eventually indistinguishable. Why even go in person until you have to?
Of course, all of this will depend on whether Vision Pro actually sees widespread adoption. But if the technology is as good as everyone who has tested it seems to think, then surely there will be at least some initial users who find immediate value.
And if that is the case, it opens the door for the masses. To once again quote Om: "It is not hard to be excited about the possibilities."
I took the above photo on my Fujifilm X-T3 at the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Toronto. Obviously, it is a cast of David Bowie's head. I've been using Fujifilm's X cameras for exactly 3 years now and have already gone through 2 different models. I love them. But Om Malik's recent post on why the future belongs to computational photography is, in my opinion, entirely accurate.
For most people, taking photos on a standalone camera and dropping them into Lightroom is not only far too much work, but also unnecessary. Here is a chart from Om's post showing total worldwide digital camera unit sales (in millions). Sales have fallen off a cliff from about 10 years ago and now look to be on the verge of dying.
Sometime last year, Instagram changed its bottom menu bar to the following:
Bookended by the home button and the user profile button are now video reels, DMs, and the explore page. The create a new post button, which was formerly here in the center, was moved up to the top of the screen in a far less conspicuous place. These changes felt weird at first, but they were, of course, based on real user data. What people do on Instagram these days is watch reels and then share them with their friends. The era of posting beautiful square photos with nice filter edits died a long time ago.
But even today's world of video reels and TikTok videos is in massive flux. AI is flooding the system, and it's impossible to know what is "real" anymore. The name of the game with social media used to be authenticity. This is how individuals gained distribution control from institutions and large brands; they were more real and authentic. But today, we are in a world where AI-generated content can be entirely indistinguishable from "real" or captured content.
I have felt this change myself. As someone who has been a hobby photographer since undergrad some 20+ years ago, I have noticed myself grabbing my Fujifilm camera a lot less over the last year. Instead, I've just been using my phone and spending more time playing around with AI. And, of course, it's not just me. I see my architect and real estate friends using AI to test concepts, create presentation renderings, and more. So, where does all of this leave a platform like Instagram that was designed around individuals creating and sharing their own content?
A few days ago, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, published these twenty slides about how the company sees the world as we head into 2026. They're an interesting read because they mark a shift in messaging. Previously, the narrative was all about connecting the world and empowering creators. Now it's about labeling, mediating, and controlling this new world. In the words of Silicon Valley journalist and entrepreneur Om Malik, "deep down, Instagram is frightened."
But there is a path forward (excerpt also from Malik):
It starts by verifying who is behind an account, embedding provenance in media, and rewarding trust signals. Over time, Meta may tighten control and aim to be an identity broker for everyone. Instagrams want [sic] you to be prepared for this new era of tighter control over identity, authenticity, and content provenance.
One of the most important slides in Mosseri's post for me is this one here:
I've been arguing for years that crypto has an important role to play in a world filled with AI. When nobody knows what is "real" anymore, there's value in being able to say with finality that, hey, this thing over here is authentic and comes from this source. Social media (web2) showed us that people would rather tie something back to an individual instead of a large faceless brand. AI is disrupting this chain of provenance, but I think crypto will bring us back to it, somehow. Whether Instagram will be a part of it, of course, remains to be seen.
Cover photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
If you have an iPhone 15 Pro (and iOS 17.2), you can go into Settings -> Camera -> Formats and turn on a setting called "spatial video." It will then enable this (excerpt from Om Malik):
Spatial video is a mixed-reality video format that allows videos to record the depth and spatial information of the scene, and when you play it back, you get a more immersive, three-dimensional (3D) experience. The iPhone 15 Pro utilizes its main lens and the ultra-wide lens to capture the depth and spatial information of the videos. The spatial videos are captured at 1080p, 30 frames per second, and use the HEIC format.
What you can then do is watch your videos on something like an Apple Vision Pro. It's not going to be exactly perfect right now -- given that the Vision Pro display is over 8k and the above is 1080p -- but it will give you an indication of what's to come for photography, video, and many other use cases.
Some examples.
As a regular consumer, this might allow you to capture videos from a trip and then more fully relive the moments once you're at home. And as Om argues in his post, this will inevitably change photography/video. Because how we consume media, impacts how and what we capture.
If you're in the business of selling real estate to people, you can also imagine this set up having a profound impact on virtual tours. Because now you have something that's pretty damn close to reality, if not eventually indistinguishable. Why even go in person until you have to?
Of course, all of this will depend on whether Vision Pro actually sees widespread adoption. But if the technology is as good as everyone who has tested it seems to think, then surely there will be at least some initial users who find immediate value.
And if that is the case, it opens the door for the masses. To once again quote Om: "It is not hard to be excited about the possibilities."
I took the above photo on my Fujifilm X-T3 at the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Toronto. Obviously, it is a cast of David Bowie's head. I've been using Fujifilm's X cameras for exactly 3 years now and have already gone through 2 different models. I love them. But Om Malik's recent post on why the future belongs to computational photography is, in my opinion, entirely accurate.
For most people, taking photos on a standalone camera and dropping them into Lightroom is not only far too much work, but also unnecessary. Here is a chart from Om's post showing total worldwide digital camera unit sales (in millions). Sales have fallen off a cliff from about 10 years ago and now look to be on the verge of dying.
What is obvious is that we are all now just taking photos on our phones. Thanks to better chips, sensors, and software, the future of photography looks, again, destined to be computational. Apple is set to announce its new iPhone 11 (or whatever it will be called) this week and already the rumors point to a dramatically improved camera.
This change in hardware has also changed our relationship to the photograph. We now take photos for the purpose of real-time sharing, which is another point that Om makes. When I post photos of things that have happened in the past -- as I often do -- people are commonly confused: "Where are you? When are you back in Toronto? Wait, is this a #latergram?"
This has made photographic memories feel ephemeral. Once the moment has passed, we forget about them. They get drowned out in new real-time images and shares. As a society we are taking more photos than ever before. Not surprisingly, this lowers the gravitas of each individual one.
What is obvious is that we are all now just taking photos on our phones. Thanks to better chips, sensors, and software, the future of photography looks, again, destined to be computational. Apple is set to announce its new iPhone 11 (or whatever it will be called) this week and already the rumors point to a dramatically improved camera.
This change in hardware has also changed our relationship to the photograph. We now take photos for the purpose of real-time sharing, which is another point that Om makes. When I post photos of things that have happened in the past -- as I often do -- people are commonly confused: "Where are you? When are you back in Toronto? Wait, is this a #latergram?"
This has made photographic memories feel ephemeral. Once the moment has passed, we forget about them. They get drowned out in new real-time images and shares. As a society we are taking more photos than ever before. Not surprisingly, this lowers the gravitas of each individual one.
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