What's wrong feels real. Instagram AI Panic (in the form of a New Year’s resolution)
How tech leaders become media ecologists
Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, posted a thread with unusually un-Instagram content—tweets about the erosion of both content and user authenticity in the era of AI, and what we can do about it. Among the proposed solutions are technical labeling of pictures made through the user’s lens as authentic and the reversal (!) of technical perfection into imperfection as a human trait. I have converted the thread into plain text for you (with my comments added).
“The key risk Instagram faces is that, as the world changes more quickly, the platform fails to keep up. Looking forward to 2026, one major shift: authenticity is becoming infinitely reproducible.
Everything that made creators matter—the ability to be real, to connect, to have a voice that couldn’t be faked—is now accessible to anyone with the right tools. Deepfakes are getting better. AI generates photos and videos indistinguishable from captured media.
Power has shifted from institutions to individuals because the internet made it so anyone with a compelling idea could find an audience. The cost of distributing information is zero.”
It happened, of course, 15 years ago: anyone familiar with the subject can’t miss a reference to Martin Gurri’s The Revolt of the Public. Since then, however, institutions have regained power, and the Revolt of the public has reversed into Restoration. Institutions have learned how to control the elements of the internet by regulating new institutional forms—platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The new equilibrium among authority, institutions, platforms, and the public is less stable than the old Gutenberg world, but it has been solidifying. Digital freedoms is reversing into the chimera of democracy merging with platform power: anarcho-tyranny.
“Individuals, not publishers or brands, established that there’s a significant market for content from people. Trust in institutions is at an all-time low. We’ve turned to self-captured content from creators we trust and admire.”
That’s the reversal of the Society of the Spectacle into the Digital Carnival. But now the Digital Carnival is being automated and AI-ized (unlike most internet lingo, the noun “AI” is really ugly for verbification).
“We like to complain about “AI slop,” but there’s a lot of amazing AI content. Even the quality AI content has a look though: too slick, skin too smooth. That will change—we’re going to see more realistic AI content.
Authenticity is becoming a scarce resource, driving more demand for creator content, not less. The bar is shifting from “can you create?” to “can you make something that only you could create?””
As McLuhan predicted, the user is becoming the content. This shift is also clear evidence of a centuries-long media reversal from focusing on the message to focusing on the identity of the user, from book reading to social media. Read: The reversal of identity into credentials, the fallout of media targeting.
“Unless you are under 25, you probably think of Instagram as feed of square photos: polished makeup, skin smoothing, and beautiful landscapes. That feed is dead. People stopped sharing personal moments to feed years ago.
The primary way people share now is in DMs: blurry photos and shaky videos of daily experiences. Shoe shots and unflattering candids. This raw aesthetic has bled into public content and across artforms.”
The Wrong Theory has finally find its very practical demand. Not only art, marketing, and journalism, but the entire “public sphere” (well, its digital surrogate) now needs verification through wrongness, roughness, and imperfection. I wrote about it in 2015, after the awkward Katy Perry Left Shark moment at the Super Bowl halftime: “Not only wrongness but even mistakes can create value. For example, when robot journalism outperforms human writing, it’s precisely mistakes that will define the peculiarity and value of human journalism.” Read: The Wrong Theory. Wrongness as a lure, in design and media.
“The camera companies are betting on the wrong aesthetic. They’re competing to make everyone look like a pro photographer from 2015. But in a world where AI can generate flawless imagery, the professional look becomes the tell.
Flattering imagery is cheap to produce and boring to consume. People want content that feels real. Savvy creators are leaning into unproduced, unflattering images. In a world where everything can be perfected, imperfection becomes a signal.
Rawness isn’t just aesthetic preference anymore—it’s proof. It’s defensive. A way of saying: this is real because it’s imperfect.”
Brilliant. Some people say, of course, that it will work only until machines learn to mimic human errors, imperfection, and roughness. But I say that, at that point in the AI revolution, mimicking humans will become irrelevant. Why? By then, “the Moor has done his work, the Moor may go.” AI will be on its own, with no need for the cargo cult of mimicking humans.
“Relatively quickly, AI will create any aesthetic you like, including an imperfect one that presents as authentic. At that point we’ll need to shift our focus to who says something instead of what is being said.”
Identity politics is awaiting another tremendous boost. It does not matter what is said or done—it matters by whom.
“For most of my life I could safely assume photographs or videos were largely accurate captures of moments that happened. This is clearly no longer the case and it’s going to take us years to adapt.
We’re going to move from assuming what we see is real by default, to starting with skepticism. Paying attention to who is sharing something and why. This will be uncomfortable—we’re genetically predisposed to believing our eyes.”
Tech moguls are becoming media ecologists. Long overdue.
“Platforms like Instagram will do good work identifying AI content, but they’ll get worse at it over time as AI gets better. It will be more practical to fingerprint real media than fake media.
Camera manufacturers will cryptographically sign images at capture, creating a chain of custody.
Labeling is only part of the solution. We need to surface much more context about the accounts sharing content so people can make informed decisions. Who is behind the account?
In a world of infinite abundance and infinite doubt, the creators who can maintain trust and signal authenticity—by being real, transparent, and consistent—will stand out.”
A new round of amplified identity signaling… The predigital human “great effort—great reward” circuitry has no chance of surviving.
“We need to build the best creative tools. Label AI-generated content and verify authentic content. Surface credibility signals about who’s posting. Continue to improve ranking for originality.
"Instagram is going to have to evolve in a number of ways, and fast.”
Good luck. But what is presumably aimed at preserving human interactions (and Instagram’s business) from AI will also accelerate the demise of a culture based on content and its reversal into a culture based on identity signaling. Digital media are completing the formation of a culture in which identity, not deeds, becomes proof of real existence and is valorized for its own sake. The only comforting thing is that it will not last anyway; nothing lasts in the era of accelerating reversals.
See also books by Andrey Mir:
The Viral Inquisitor and other essays on postjournalism and media ecology (2024)
Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’ Axial Age and Logan’s Alphabet Effect (2024)
