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037 The Head of Instagram Just Told You to Leave Instagram. Here's What His Essay Meant
DOC 01—03-26
Curiosity: Was this just a Freudian slip? Did the Head of Instagram just admit AI slop is here to stay? Category: Insight
The Canary Just Sang
Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, just published something interesting on Threads. Not a product update. Not a press release. A 1,200-word essay about AI, authenticity, and the future of creator content. It’s not new for Adam Mosseri to use his profile on Instagram or Threads to speak directly to platform users regarding tips, tools, or answer questions about why the brand makes specific decisions.
Read his Threads post once, and you'll think he's concerned about helping creators navigate AI. Read it twice, you'll see what he's actually saying: We're about to flood your feeds with synthetic content, and if you want to survive, you'd better figure out how to prove you're real.
It's a confession wrapped in strategy speak.
What He Said vs. What He Meant
He said: "Authenticity is becoming infinitely reproducible."
He meant:We can't tell the difference between real and fake anymore, and neither can you.
He said: "Social media platforms are going to come under increasing pressure to identify and label AI-generated content."
He meant:We're going to try, but we'll fail. AI gets better faster than our detection systems do.
He said: "Creators who can maintain trust and signal authenticity will stand out."
He meant:Good luck competing with an infinite supply of free, perfectly optimized AI content on our platform.
The tell is in what he admits they'll try to do versus what he says will actually work. Labeling AI content? They'll attempt it. Fingerprinting real media? Camera manufacturers could do it. Surfacing credibility signals? Maybe. Many reassuring-sounding tactics are listed, but all are hedged in ways that avoid any commitment to their effectiveness.
But here's what the Head of Instagram is certain about: AI content is coming, it's going to be everywhere, and the platforms can't stop it (and they don’t really want to).
Why This Essay Exists
Three reasons Instagram's founder published this now:
One: To drive traffic to Threads. The essay’s viral success underscores the platform’s long-form capability and stakes a claim for the platform as the place for substantive conversation.
Two: Prep the market for what's coming. Meta wants AI content on their platforms because AI content is infinite, free, and keeps people scrolling. Human creators are expensive, unpredictable, and are personally aware enough to demand a revenue share based on the outsized value they provide. This essay is a soft launch for that future.
Three: Shift responsibility. When your feed is 60% AI slop by 2027, they'll point to this essay and say, "We told you this was coming. We tried to label it. We gave creators tools to compete." It’s like an insurance policy against even more backlash.
In essence, it’s a platform prepared to prioritize AI content while framing it as a concern for creators and inevitability.
The Three Paths Forward
If you're a creator, you have three options:
Path 1: Ride the wave and use AI tools to pump out more content faster. Compete on volume. Hope the algorithm favors you over the other million creators doing the same thing. This is a race to the bottom, though, and the bottom is automated content that costs nothing to produce while being force-fed to billions who will eventually be too apathetic to even respond to it.
Path 2: Swim against it and double down on "raw aesthetic." Post blurry, unpolished, aggressively real content to signal authenticity. The founder of Instagram literally told you this was coming: "Rawness isn't just aesthetic preference anymore—it's proof." The problem? AI will also learn to simulate rawness. It's already happening. You'll be authenticating your authenticity, which is exhausting and ultimately unsustainable, and sounds stupid.
Path 3: Build your own land and get off the platforms. I don’t mean get off completely, but use them as a distribution funnel and stop building your empire on rented land.
Path 3 is the only path that compounds; it’s the only path that makes sense.
Why Websites Are the Answer
The internet had a structural problem that was solved the wrong way.
In the early days, everyone had a website. You controlled your design, your content, and your audience relationship. But discovery was hard, hosting was technical, and monetization was unclear. Myspace came through and gave us a bridge into what a discovery answer could look like on the consumer level.
Then, with Facebook, social media platforms finally solved all three. Easy discovery, no technical barriers, built-in monetization. So we all moved there and built on their land.
Twenty years later, and we're learning what renting costs.
The algorithm controls who sees your work. The platform controls the format, the feed, and the features. They can (and will) flood it with AI content because their incentive is views to justify ad spend, not your personal success or well-being. And when the platform changes, and it always changes, you risk losing everything you’ve built.
Websites solve the AI authenticity problem in a way platforms can't because you control the experience.
No algorithm decides who sees what. No AI slop mixed into your content unless you’re pushing it there, in which case, good for you?. No competing with infinite synthetic posts for attention. You own the relationship. Email lists, RSS feeds, direct traffic, they’re all yours. The platform can't take them away. Instagram can change the algorithm tomorrow. Your email list works the same next year as it does today.
Building your own website helps you build equity. Every article you publish, every project you document, every image or video you post, every case study you create compounds. Google rewards sites with depth and authority. Platforms reward what benefits them most.
Authenticity is only proved through depth and endurance. AI can generate a feed post. It can't generate three years of consistent publishing, a coherent body of work, and a documented perspective that evolves over the years. Your archive is the only authenticity fingerprint you need.
Adam Mosseri is right when he says in a world of infinite synthetic content, provenance matters. The question is whether you prove that on platforms designed for AI content, or on your own site, where you control the narrative.
What Buying Land Teaches You About Building Online
For generations, the wealth-building advice was to buy land. Land is finite, it compounds in value, and you control what happens on it.
The internet promised to democratize access, but it centralized control. As more monetization opportunities presented themselves, we willfully traded land ownership for apartment living. The platforms are landlords, and they're about to invite a million AI roommates into your building.
A website is land. It's finite (your domain), it compounds (SEO, backlinks, authority), and you control it completely.
Social media is and always has been better as a distribution channel. It gets people's attention. But attention without ownership is just renting mindshare. You need somewhere to send people that you have ownership of.
The creators who win the next decade aren't the ones with the most followers. They're the ones with their own infrastructure. A website that ranks. An email list they own. A body of work that can't be replicated by AI because it's rooted in years of documented perspective.
The Move Right Now
If you're a creator, a brand, or anyone building an audience:
Stop optimizing for the platform. Start building for yourself.
This doesn't mean abandon Instagram or TikTok, or Threads. Use them. But use them as distribution channels, and stop treating them as your foundation.
Your platform strategy should be:
Create on your website
Distribute everywhere else
Funnel people back to what you own
The Head of Instagram just told you that social media platforms are about to get flooded. He's not wrong about the problem. But his solution, better AI tools for creators, content labeling, and credibility signals, reads less like a remedy than a strategy to keep users on the platform.
The actual solution is older and simpler: build your own site, own your audience, control your distribution.
In a world where everything can be faked, the only proof that matters is what you've built over time in a place you control.
The canary is singing if you haven’t been listening.
If you're a founder or creator navigating platform dependency and need strategic
clarity, let's talk about a better path forward.
Reach out HEREand let's chart that course together.