As Instagram’s Algorithm Approaches, Angry Creators Implore Followers To Turn On Notifications

Many Instragrammers are in a downright tizzy about an algorithmic change — now rumored to drop tomorrow — in which posts will be displayed according to significance as opposed to the app’s longstanding reverse chronological order. And so the precautionary (and somewhat frantic) hashtag #TurnMeOn has been born.

The hashtag, which currently accounts for more than 40,000 posts on Instagram, is a besiege by some creators asking fans to turn on push notifications for all future posts.

On March 16, Instagram announced that its algorithmic change would arrive in “coming months” — insisting, at first, that the entirety of every user’s feed would still be visible — just in a different order. But as rumors swirled, particularly in the UK, that the algorithm would go into effect tomorrow, creators like Cameron Dallas, Gigi Gorgeous, Grace Helbig, and Andrea Russett began imploring their followers to turn on notifications — many of them using graphics created especially for the occasion.

Russett took her disdain for the update one step further, advising her followers to “turn off your automatic app updates and just never update Instagram again. That’s my plan.” (Editor’s Note: Russett’s deleted the Instagram post where she wrote this, but said post used to be embedded above.)

While the idea of receiving a message every time one of your favorite creators has posted a picture may sound like notification nightmare, Russett and the other creators popularizing #TurnMeOn aren’t the only ones up in arms about the update. A petition on Change.org titled Keep Instagram Chronological has already garnered roughly 250,000 signatures.

As other social networks have transitioned from chronology to algorithms, such moves have traditionally been met with fevered outcry followed by a resigned acceptance of sorts. Facebook, which owns Instagram, made the switch in 2009. And earlier this month, Twitter made its algorithmic timeline a default for all users, but with the option to turn it off.