Instagram 'post reach' suddenly dropped or lost? Platform head says it's your fault

Instagram is one of the most popular and used social platforms worldwide. Every day millions of people check their feeds, upload new posts or send messages through the app.

Just like similar platforms, content creators are a key part. However, for months now, several creators have been complaining about sudden drop in reach for their posts.

They have been trying to get this feedback to the Instagram devs to try to make things better, but they have only found a response that has made the anger grow.

The ‘post reach drop’ issue has been causing frustration for many since the reach algorithm seems to behave randomly.

Instagram creators have complained about situations such as post reach suddenly and massively dropping from one day to the next for no apparent reason (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

Due to the issue, many users are not receiving posts from the accounts they follow in their feeds.

Why even bother anymore. Ive consistently lost around 20/40 followers a day, but my reach used to be good enough that I’d end up each day net positive. But now if I’m lucky I’ll reach like 20 non followers on a post. Occasionally one might reach 70. And it just feels like a circle.
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My views are so low on stories!?

I’ve had my Instagram page since 2019, my page now has 54K followers, 10M+ accounts reached this month through my content, etc.

Although for some reason my story views have been so low for 6+ months. I’ve tried adding stickers, polls, the new reaction sticker, etc and nothing works.
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There are cases where paid post-boosting is not being effective either.

Some Instagram creators report that the ‘lost reach’ situation has become worse after recent updates.

My reach from reels and posts dropped after May update!

My post and reels are doing fine before May. Posts usually get 120+ likes and reels may vary on likes, but they get a lot of reach. I have a few reels blown up before with 100k views. My acc is only 1k followers. Now after May, my reach from everything has decrease by half…
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Adam Mosseri (Head of Instagram) was answering questions through his Stories. One of those questions was about how to know when our profile is ‘shadowbanned’ (related to the sudden loss of reach).

However, the response was far from what Instagram creators were expecting, since he basically blamed them for the loss of reach. More specifically, he said: ‘They are not as interested in your content‘.

So, it doesn’t seem like the people in charge of Instagram feel like there’s a problem on their side. Therefore, it is very unlikely that users and content creators will receive a solution to the problem.

After Mosseri’s response, many creators were quick to express their frustration about it (1, 2, 3, 4, 5):

What an absolute dog shit excuse. Reach drops not because followers are “no longer interested in content”, but because your content isn’t in the format that the platform deems to be interesting. I’ve had plenty examples of IG cutting reach to my posts because of this.
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I know it’s a bit true when he said that our followers don’t like our content anymore could cause this. But I think it’s like if the initial engagement doesn’t meet with the app’s rating standard, then the post will just do so badly or get hidden from the rest of my followers and therefore this snowballs to telling Instagram that my post suck even more, which is not necessarily true in this case.
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We will be monitoring the situation to update this story as events unfold.

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