Instagram is one of Australia’s most popular social media platforms. Almost two in three Aussies have an account.

Ushering in 2026 and what he calls “synthetic everything” on our feeds, Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri has signalled the platform will likely adjust its algorithms to surface more original content instead of AI slop.

Finding ways to tackle widespread AI content is the latest in a long series of shifts Instagram has undergone over the past decade. Some are obvious and others are more subtle. But all affect user experience and behaviour, and, more broadly, how we see and understand the online social world.

To identify some of these patterns, I examined ten years’ worth of Instagram posts from a single account (@australianassociatedpress) for an upcoming study.

This involved looking at nearly 2,000 posts and more than 5,000 media assets. I selected the AAP account as an example of a noteworthy Australian account with public service value.

I found six key shifts over this timeframe. Although user practices vary, this analysis provides a glimpse into some larger ways the AAP account – and social media more broadly – has been changing in the past decade.

Reflecting on some of these changes also provides hints at how social media might change in the future, and what that means for society.

When it launched in 2010, Instagram quickly became known as the platform that re-popularised the square image format. Square........

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