For a few hours on Thursday, Instagram users were stunned to find that the app's timeline had been completely redesigned, removing one of the most satisfying features of the social network — scrolling.
Turns out, that update was never supposed to go public, according to Tech Crunch.
The technology blog spoke to an Instagram spokesperson that confirmed that that the update was sent out due to a "bug," and that users' feeds would return to normal.
Instead of scrolling vertically to see photos of friends and celebrities, some Instagram users reported Thursday morning that an update forced them to swipe left and right to view new photos — a move that mimicked Instagram's "Stories" feature.
The response to the brief change on social media was, unsurprisingly, negative. Some compared the update to the infamous Snapchat update from early 2018 that moved celebrity stories to a separate page.
“i honestly might delete my instagram app. this is what snapchat did and everyone hated it! does nobody in the tech world learn from anyone else’s mistakes?” my little sister who has never once had a tech opinion in her life throwing an absolute FIT over the update
— maya kosoff (@mekosoff) December 27, 2018
This new Instagram update is dumb. Why get rid of the scrolling feature? It’s been like that since the beginning. Why would you do this. This reminds me of that awful Snapchat update that they had to change back to normal because it sucked so bad. @instagram #ChangeItBack
— Garrett Stern (@TehrealGarrett) December 27, 2018
Facebook, Twitter and snapchat looking at the new Instagram update pic.twitter.com/gCbzphPnMy
— Jake🃏 (@Morgsyy) December 27, 2018