how to endure instagram

17 Sep, 2026

So after years of not using instagram, I finally gave up and made an account. To follow and be connected with local parkour community (and after creating account I remembered many of my friends and family also still post, so to connect with them as well.) Still, I despise instagram and everything meta has done to steal our attention... so here's my strategy for using it, trying to minimize the harms of it, while still getting the benefits.

Use on browser - That's easiest way to set up ig in a way it has no distractions.
Hide unnecessary stuff with uBlock Origin - I've hidden everything from the main page except stories, posts and link to direct messages. That means no navigation bar, no like alerts. This is especially important on desktop, as it has even more distracting unnecessary elements.
Redirect to following page - I use LeechBlock to redirect instagram main page to the "following" page which only shows posts from users users you're following, in chronological order. So basically instagram.com/ → instagram.com/?variant=following (instructions at end of post)
Only follow people you actually want to follow - For me it's friends, local athletes whose content I actually care about, and some "influencers" or whatever, whose content I find useful and inspiring. Everything else is fluff and waste of time. Especially people who post cool stuff, but don't make you feel inspired, but instead just create fomo. Not everything cool is follow-worthy.
Hide stories - Some people have interesting posts, but post stories wayyy too much. For those people, go to their profile, click "Following" → "Mute" → "Stories".
Hide likes - Go to menu (≡ at top right corner) → "What you see" → "Like and share counts" → "Hide like and share counts".
Post like technically senile - This one is for those contemplating if they want to post or not. When thinking how much effort you should put into posts, if you even want to post to such predatory platform... use exactly the amount of effort what instagram deserves. Which is "almost none". Just post it for your friends to see. No hashtags or spending too much time editing or whatever.
Avoid the app at all costs - it makes you scroll reels, which suck you in for way longer than you planned for. If I need the app for some feature which is not available on browser, I download it and then delete it asap.

Honestly it's a fucking joke we live in a world where such a big portion of event updates and connection happens through an app designed to turn you into a reel tweaker (reelker?)

For this redirect to work and not mess instagram up, entering instagram.com to the basic domain name list doesn't work. Instead go bottom of options, open advanced settings, and type these:

Use regular expression to match URLs to block (overrides list of sites): ^https://www\.instagram\.com/?$
Use regular expression to match URLs to allow (overrides exceptions in list of sites): ^https://www\.instagram\.com/\?

Then, in the basic settings, add this:

Enter the fully specified URL of the page to show instead of these blocked sites: https://www.instagram.com/?variant=following

That's it! Remember to tick Saturday and Sunday for block days as well, they're not chosen by default.