Sisters Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian criticized Facebook’s Instagram on Monday, urging the social media platform to stop mimicking its competitor, the Chinese-owned TikTok.
Jenner, who has 361 million followers on Instagram, and Kardashian, who has 326 million followers on the platform, shared an Instagram Story Monday, which read, “Make Instagram Instagram Again.”
“Stop trying to be TikTok I just want to see cute photos of my friends. Sincerely, everyone,” the post added.
In 2020, Instagram implemented a new feature called “Reels,” allowing users to create short-form videos, in which they can include a song or some type of trending audio — similar to the content seen on TikTok.
“Reels shares many of the same features and functions of TikTok which is why the two platforms are often thought of interchangeably when it comes to video content,” Sprout Social reported in March.
Instagram statistics also revealed that Reels are one of the most popular features on the platform.
The celebrity sisters are known for being able to influence their impressionable young audiences. In 2018, Jenner criticized the redesign of Snapchat, causing shares of parent company Snap to drop seven percent.
While Jenner and Kardashian urge Instagram to stop copying the Chinese app, others might argue to the contrary in the hopes that U.S. social media platforms (despite their many problems and censorship) might be able to implement features that would help curtail users on TikTok, which is viewed by many as a Chinese-owned data collection tool, thinly-veiled as a social media platform.
Last month, leaked audio from over 80 internal meetings revealed that China-based employees of TikTok repeatedly accessed U.S. user data, despite the company’s claims to the contrary.
In August 2020, then-President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning TikTok and the Chinese app WeChat in the U.S., citing his belief that TikTok’s “data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information.”
That executive order was revoked by President Joe Biden last year, leaving the Chinese app clear to operate in the United States.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.