The Hidden Hand Behind Your Feed: Who Decides What We See on Instagram?

Instagram used to be about one thing: connection. It was a way to share moments with friends, capture beautiful scenes, and discover stories that would never have crossed our paths otherwise. But now? Now, it feels like a never-ending scroll of curated chaos. It's a place where you can’t help but ask: Who’s in charge here? What is Instagram, really, when we peel away the filters? And yet, there they are, showing up on your feed and getting countless views. These aren’t just exceptions; they’re regular, creeping reminders that the platform’s filters—those supposed safeguards against inappropriate content—are failing us. Instagram, it seems, has forgotten one fundamental thing: It’s not just about what’s posted. It’s about who gets to see it and the impact it has.


It’s one thing to have explicit content on the platform—it’s another when that content is being shown to people without their consent. You can be minding your own business, scrolling through your feed, and suddenly, you’re faced with nudity or explicit videos that have no place being there. The unsettling part is that these posts don’t need you to click on anything to show up—they’re just there.

• Why does this matter? Because it says something about how we, as users, are valued: only as passive consumers, susceptible to whatever is pushed into our view. Nudity, when it appears out of context, isn’t just a random video; it’s a direct challenge to our sense of privacy, consent, and emotional boundaries.

Instagram has strict guidelines about nudity and explicit content, but those guidelines only seem to apply when it’s convenient. The algorithm doesn’t care about context. It doesn’t care if a video or post adds value to the conversation or crosses boundaries—it cares about views. And when those views are coming from the wrong places, the real question is: Who’s truly responsible for what’s pushed into the feed?


Then there’s the violence. Fight videos, accidents, raw footage of physical confrontations—content that would typically make anyone cringe or recoil is somehow just part of the daily scroll. You’d think, given Instagram’s own rules, these kinds of posts wouldn’t make it past the gatekeepers, but time and time again, they slip through.

• What’s the bigger issue here? It's not just that violence is being tolerated. It’s that violence has become part of what’s deemed “entertaining.” The algorithm rewards shock value over sensitivity. When we repeatedly see violence in this context, it stops feeling shocking. It becomes just another video to swipe past.

The danger lies in the numbness it fosters. The more you see it, the less impact it has. That’s how desensitization works—it sneaks in quietly, eroding empathy and sensitivity until we stop questioning what’s right or wrong. Is this what we want? To be so accustomed to brutality that we forget its consequences?


Instagram has become the breeding ground for jokes, memes, and humor—often under the guise of “dark humor.” We’ve all seen it: memes that cross the line from funny to outright disrespectful, filled with bullying, body-shaming, and sometimes, just flat-out cruelty. And it’s not just the jokes themselves. It’s how the platform facilitates this culture of humor by allowing these posts to be tagged as “funny” or “relatable,” as if that somehow absolves them of their potential harm.

• Why is this dangerous? Because humor, when it perpetuates hate, bullying, or harmful stereotypes, isn’t just humor—it’s a tool of division and pain. The fact that it’s allowed to thrive on a platform with millions of young minds only amplifies its impact. When something is laughed at, it’s normalized. And when something is normalized, it becomes part of our social fabric.

The question isn’t whether Instagram allows jokes—it’s whether those jokes are promoting a healthier environment. And if the answer is no, then we have to ask: Why are we letting this slide?


What’s most alarming about all of this isn’t just the content itself—it’s the message Instagram is sending about what’s acceptable and what isn’t. By allowing this kind of content to be so readily accessible, Instagram is implicitly saying that there’s no real line between what’s “for everyone” and what’s meant for a specific audience. It’s about as far from being a safe space as you can get, and it’s about time we start calling it what it is: a failure in its responsibility to users.

The children who scroll through Instagram deserve better. The teenagers and young adults who are already navigating a world of complex relationships, self-image issues, and mental health challenges should not have to fight through explicit content, violence, and cruel jokes just to enjoy a harmless scroll. It’s not about censorship—it’s about context, moderation, and intention.

Instagram was never meant to be a platform that promotes exploitation or normalization of toxic behaviors. It was built to be a social space, to connect people, share stories, and engage with the world in meaningful ways. But right now, the conversation is about how the app has strayed from that vision. It’s about how we, as users, have to navigate through a minefield of inappropriate content to get to the good stuff.

For Instagram to regain its purpose, it needs to take a hard look at how it moderates content. It’s not enough to just remove content after the fact—it needs a system that actively filters out harmful, explicit, and inappropriate posts from the very beginning.

• User Control: Give users more control over what they see. Make it possible to block explicit or harmful content altogether.
• Better Moderation: Instagram’s algorithm should prioritize human interaction in decision-making, not just views or likes. We need more responsible oversight, not automated decisions.
• A Return to Respect: It’s time Instagram returns to the roots of respect—respect for its users, their boundaries, and their well-being.

Instagram can’t keep pretending that its platform is a reflection of the real world if it doesn’t filter out what’s harmful. We, as its users, deserve better. More than that, we need better—for our own peace of mind, for the safety of younger users, and for the future of what social media should be. The question is, will Instagram listen?