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The Shift

What if a Healthier Facebook Is Just … Instagram?

Credit...Glenn Harvey

For the past several years, Facebook has been conducting what amounts to an A/B test on human society, using two different social media apps.

The first app in Facebook’s test has a maximalist design: It allows users to post lengthy status updates, with links to news articles, photos, videos and more. The app is designed as a giant megaphone, with an emphasis on public sharing and an algorithmic feed capable of sending posts rocketing around the world in seconds.

The second app in the test is more minimalist, designed for intimate sharing rather than viral broadcasting. Users of this app, many of whom have private accounts with modest followings, can post photos or videos, but external links do not work and there is no re-share button, making it harder for users to amplify one another’s posts.

The results of this test have been stark. The first app, Facebook, turned into a huge and unmanageable behemoth that swallowed the media industry, was exploited by hostile foreign actors, empowered autocrats, created the conditions for a global fake news epidemic and ultimately became a giant headache for its creators.

The second app, Instagram, has fared much better. It hasn’t been overrun with bogus news, it hasn’t been exploited to the same degree, and most users seem happy with it — especially young users, who vastly prefer it to Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to spend 2018 cleaning up Facebook, and ensuring that “our services aren’t just fun to use, but also good for people’s well-being.” He’s also pledged to deal with the scourge of fake news on Facebook, and do a better job of keeping bad actors at bay.

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Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to make Facebook “good for people’s well-being.”Credit...Stephen Lam/Reuters

Good for him. But there may be a simpler fix here. Why doesn’t he make his beleaguered blue app more like Instagram, the Facebook-owned app that isn’t destabilizing society?

Last week, Facebook unveiled its latest attempt to rein in its flagship product. In an effort to curb false news, it announced it would be allowing Facebook users to rank news outlets by trustworthiness, and consider those scores when deciding which news stories to display in users’ feeds.

But this kind of minor algorithmic knob-fiddling may not be enough. Instead, Facebook should consider using what it’s learned with Instagram, which it acquired in 2012, to embark on a gut renovation.

If I were Mr. Zuckerberg, here are some Instagram lessons I’d be thinking about.

Lesson No. 1: Emphasize visuals. De-emphasize text.

First, and most obviously, Instagram is a visual medium. Photos and videos are the main event, and text, while present, is mostly confined to captions and comments. As a result, Instagram feels more intimate than Facebook, where photos and videos often sit alongside lengthy diatribes, restaurant check-ins and mundane status updates.

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The image-heavy Instagram does not have a native sharing function, which discourages rapid, in-the-moment commentary.

Research has shown that, in some cases, visual platforms can be good for us. One study, published by researchers at the University of Oregon in 2016, found that the use of image-based platforms like Instagram and Snapchat was associated with lower levels of loneliness among users, and higher levels of happiness and satisfaction, while text-based platforms had no correlation with improved mental health.

A heavily visual platform also makes a relatively poor conduit for breaking news and in-the-moment commentary, which might explain why Instagram often feels less exhausting than other social networks. (It also explains why last month, before I went on vacation, I deleted every social media app from my phone except Instagram — the only app I trusted not to ruin my beachside calm.)

Lesson No. 2: Rethink the share button.

One of Instagram’s most underrated virtues is that it has imposed structural limits on virality — the ability of a given post to spread beyond its intended audience. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, on Instagram there is no native sharing function, meaning that the reach of most Instagram posts is capped at the number of people who follow the user’s account. (There are ways to “regram” someone else’s photo using a third-party app, but they’re clunky, and relatively few people use them. Instagram also recently began showing users posts from people they don’t follow, a Facebook-inspired change that I’d argue is a mistake.)

A native share button has been tremendously useful for Facebook’s and Twitter’s growth. It has also allowed upstart media organizations like BuzzFeed and Upworthy to build enormous audiences by specializing in highly shareable stories. But ease of sharing has also allowed the loudest and most emotional voices to be rewarded with clicks — and attention. It’s this incentive structure that has allowed partisans and profiteers to hijack Facebook’s algorithms and spread divisive messages and false news to millions of people.

The easy virality of Facebook also seems to have made individual users more hesitant about opening up. That makes sense — it’s easier to share a selfie if you know it won’t accidentally find its way into the feeds of a million strangers.

Lesson No. 3: Ban links.

Instagram’s greatest structural advantage, though, may be a result of its decision to go mostly link-free. Links in Instagram captions and comments aren’t clickable, and while some users have found workarounds, the vast majority of Instagram posts aren’t meant to send users to outside websites. (The exceptions are ads, which can contain clickable links and are, not coincidentally, the most troubled part of Instagram’s platform.)

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Unlike Facebook, Instagram does not allow clickable links in captions and comments.

The walled-garden nature of Instagram has frustrated publishers, who want to send followers out to their websites, where the publishers can earn advertising money and “control the reader experience.” (It’s really just about the money.) But Instagram has wisely refused to give in, perhaps realizing that allowing links might turn the platform into a screeching bazaar, with publishers and pages all doing circus acts for clicks.

Removing links from Facebook would wreak havoc on the digital media industry, which has built an economic model around referral traffic from Facebook. It would also risk alienating some users, who enjoy promoting and discussing stories from other parts of the internet. But it would also solve some of the platform’s most vexing challenges. And ultimately, it would be better for the world.

After all, malicious actors don’t post fabricated news, wildly exaggerated headlines or partisan outrage-bait on Facebook only for fun. They do it, in many cases, because it’s profitable. Take away bad actors’ incentives and they’ll go elsewhere.

Banning most links doesn’t seem to have hurt Instagram as a business. It had more than 800 million monthly active users as of September, and it gained a million new advertisers last year. Facebook doesn’t break out Instagram’s revenue, but some analysts expect the app could one day generate as much as $10 billion in annual revenue. That’s still nowhere near Facebook, which earned $10 billion in revenue last quarter alone, but it’s a meaningful number, and it shows that insularity isn’t always a bad thing.

Lesson No. 4: Bad actors are unavoidable, but their influence can be contained.

Instagram is far from a perfect social network, and copying it wouldn’t fix all of Facebook’s problems overnight. Among other issues, some research has shown that use of Instagram can breed insecurity and bullying, and exacerbate body image issues, especially among young women.

Instagram also hosts its own sketchy microeconomy — just witness the scourge of Insta-celebrities endorsing dubious health products, or the uptick in fly-by-night consumer brands that market themselves using Instagram ads.

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Instagram headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.Credit...Christie Hemm Klok for The New York Times

And Russian propagandists did use Instagram to try to influence American voters before the 2016 presidential election, with posts that reached as many as 20 million users. (Far less than the estimated 126 million people who were reached by Russian posts on Facebook, but a hefty number nonetheless.)

But even these flaws are preferable to the structural problems that have plagued Facebook.

Given the choice between a version of Facebook that made some of its users feel ugly and unpopular, and one that could be used to undermine democracies and promote misinformation around the world, I know which one I’d pick. A few billion Facebook users might agree.

Email Kevin Roose at kevin.roose@nytimes.com, or follow him on Facebook at facebook.com/kevinroose and on Twitter: @kevinroose.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: The App Facebook Aims to Be, It Already Owns. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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