Instagram floods non-paid users with ads – Thred Website

Thousands of us looking to procrastinate on Instagram this morning were halted by a new paid sign-up page.
The vast majority of us who steered clear of the ‘ad-free’ tier, given Instagram has been sponsor and ad heavy in recent years anyway, are now taking part in a trial to see how heavily the platform can bombard us with ads before we succumb. The alternative is a monthly fee of £2.99.
Instagram’s core services remain free to use, but you can now expect ads to appear within every few posts on your timeline or reels. The new integration is anything but subtle, making roughly a third of screen time on the app dedicated to ads.
Meta is positioning the subscription as an optional layer rather than a requirement, but the overnight flooding of feeds appears both overzealous and intrusive. Given the drastic nature of the shift, Meta is clearly willing to risk driving users away. But what is the actual objective here?
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Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Meta needs to find a foolproof way to avoid being penalised for further privacy mishaps. UK and EU regulators have already squeezed billions out of the conglomerate for breaches related to data processing, targeted advertising, and transparency failures over the last decade.
By bottlenecking users into a ‘consent or pay’ model – which has the terms of its data collecting concealed in blocks of small print – it has technically complied with the need to be transparent about how its targeted ads work.
Meta is also willingly spending billions on AI infrastructure, metaverse projects (why?), and data centres, while investors are watching closely to see whether those bets pay off. Subscriptions offer a predictable revenue stream that is not tied entirely to advertising, which has become more volatile after Apple’s privacy changes of 2022 and shifting advertiser demand.
While Meta may have a play to get regulators off its back, however, critics of the two-tier Instagram model say that a paywall has effectively been put around privacy while the free in-app experience is deliberately being degraded.
Public reticence to the change is already palpable, and plenty of Instagram users are saying this is the final straw that will push them to delete their profiles – should Meta introduce the system permanently.
Been looking for an excuse to stop looking at @instagram for a while, and they have provided. They think it’s worth £2.99 a month to get rid of the ads 🤡
Website is horrible and frustrating to use anyway.
Just need to find a way out of WhatsApp then I can turn my back on @Meta. pic.twitter.com/KCBguXqMRj
— Edward Rose (@EdwardNRose) January 25, 2026

The timing isn’t exactly great. Younger generations are acutely aware of how much time we’re spending on social media and digital fatigue has been setting in for a while. Vegging out scrolling short-form vertical video is one thing, but when every other post is an ad, we’re constantly reminded that we’re a commodity to be rinsed.
Social media usage is down 10% in developed markets to an average two-hours-20 per day, marking the first significant decrease in annual engagement since 2014. This recently prompted the Financial Times to make the declaration that ‘social media has passed its peak.’
You only need look at Gen Z and Alpha’s clamour for physical items like vinyl records, magazines, and film cameras, to see how keen we are to reclaim control over what we consume.
On social media, that lack of ownership is explicit – and Meta is making that contrast increasingly apparent. Being online has never been free, but Meta has decided to cross the line into making that price itemised.
Will you be sticking with Instagram or Facebook if these changes are made permanent? Drop us a message and let us know.

Enjoyed this? Click here for more Gen Z focused Tech stories.
I’m Jamie (He/Him), the Editor in Chief at Thred. Keeping up with gaming, tech, and culture is my thing, but when away from my keyboard, you’ll probably find me wrapped around a large Tango ice blast at the latest mediocre horror flick. Follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn and drop me some ideas/feedback via email.

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