Instagram Is Disabling Its NFT Features

Reading the linked article is hard going.

“Imagine if you gave up on the Internet in 2000”. This again.

This is how distorted people’s perceptions become when they live their whole life in echo chambers.

Leaving the obvious aside, It genuinely seems like a lot of those still pushing this are utterly unaware of the harms their whole mess has caused.

Also, they’ve made it way harder to teach non-techies how to stay safe online in the future by co-opting the term “crypto”. They immediately think any use of the term crypto is related to this stuff. Your Digital ponzi scam != cryptography.

The worst part is how the public now thinks if you’re involved in software you must be a massive believer in cc/NFTs because they keep hearing about it so all techies must think it’s awesome, right!?

It’s exhausting.

I worked at Facebook in 2021, and NFTs were like a honeypot for the most useless managers.

If I were Zuck, I might start another crypto project next year and ask for volunteers because it seems like a pretty good way to extract the worst performers into a neat org chart box that can be shut down without breaking anything else.

My favorite recent NFT story was the exchange that opened an NFT market, and then closed it 30 days later because they only had $100 in trades:

https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=wazirx-closes-nft-marketpla...

NFTs: the thing nobody needed, let alone wanted, but which proved to be a sufficiently effective money laundering (sorry, "speculative") instrument that we all had to have it shoved down our throats for the better part of a year anyway.

Goodbye and good riddance.

I've got no illusions about NFTs, but I also think they're perpendicular to the real takeaway from this article: Instagram yet again tried to ape a competitor's (in this case Twitter's) feature, yet again did not check whether any of their users wanted it, and yet again shuttered it after wasting a lot of time, money, and goodwill. I am starting to wonder if it is Facebook's dumping ground for features that they don't want to test-in-prod on Facebook actual.

It is amazing to think how wild the nft craze was, definitely history will look back at it as peak zero interest rate phenomena. My favourite stories:

- BBC: Twelve-year-old boy makes £290,000 from whale NFTs https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58343062

- Guardian: Rishi Sunak asks Royal Mint to create NFT (note 11 months later, it seems this project has quietly died) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/04/rishi-sun...

If there is a future for crypto it is in the cyberpunk/pirate zone. The idea the institutional investors thought they could make a buck off all these folks is hilarious. Even in their delusional unrealized apotheosis the crypto/web3 crowd was building the anti Facebook. I think all the web3 investment was horrible BS and crypto is not a place for venture investing. If it has a future at all it should embrace the drug dealing ponzi scheming tax evading ransomwaring heart of itself. It’s not chase bank, it’s the Medellin cartel.

NFTs to me felt from the start like stereoscopic film: Sure technologically it has some interesting aspects, but I couldn't really see how the results are worth the extra effort. And anybody kept telling me it is the future.

That being said, with NFTs I have never met any truly technologically knowledgeable person who could explain me in detail why it solves the problems it (wrongfully) claimed to solve.

I am still regularly contacted by recruiters trying to peddle Web3/NFT startup jobs - how are these companies still existing and how are they making money?

Most artists using NFTs for revenue are not using IG, so are unaffected by this news. NFT is in many ways anti-Meta, just buy/sell/mint directly with your wallet.

It is now dead in the water in any app, unfortunately. Apple charges 30% fee on all in-app NFT sales, and on top of that Apple ToS strictly prohibits any “functional” use of NFT tech in their apps.[1] As you’d expect, NFT markets have moved to web in general, outside of app space.

[1] https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1584609845570768897?s=2...

Recently https://tychomusic.com/ released some old vinyl record as digital music for the first time.

You'd think a market place like https://bandcamp.com/ would make this a trivial event: create the release, set the release date, let people pay, once the release date hits everyone downloads a ZIP with some FLAC files and a JPEG cover.

Instead, this was an "NFT" release: took 15 tries (and several credit card charges) to "reserve" my spot. My purchase is now on some confusing website with random ID's all over the place, and I need to "mint" a "ticket" to log into it.

If ever there was a solution in search of a problem, NFT's are it.

I have yet to hear anyone say they are embarrassed by their crypto/NFT dabbling a, but a quiet withdrawal from this space is satisfying enough.

It’s rare I’d say this, but good for Facebook.

Even Salesforce has some NFT feature: https://www.salesforce.com/products/web3/nft/

Instagram had NFT features?

the crypto tech cycle was one of the stupidest things a bunch of supposedly smart people bought hook line and sinker in a REALLY long time. The sweaty FOMO was incredibly real for something that never withstood an even cursory amount of scrutiny.

Sounds like they didn’t roll out any actual meaningful features until long after the crypto hype died down. Peak crypto/NFT frenzy was early/mid 2021.

So not only were they bandwagoning, they were slow too.

Genuine question but does this feel like yet another nail in the coffin of cryptocoins in general?

I feel like the general sentiment is that cryptocoins have mostly been used to scam people out of money. The field seems full of manipulative tactics all for the purpose of feeding the early investors.

Blockchains are not a magic technology, they will probably have a niche use somewhere, but cryptocoins seem like a dead end.

Interesting reading through the comments here, everyone talking like it’s dead.

Is this true? Are NFT’s / crypto done? You know some people that are involved in it and they still seem to be hard into that world, so I was surprised to read all of this.

"The Web3 community responds" --- is it a community though? And is that really the expression of the "community"? Or just some selected few statements that "by coincidence" happen to be aligned to theirs?

Just because there are some people around the world doing similar things to you doesn't mean it's a community. I feel like people crave so much this feeling of "being a part of a community" that they try to apply this to everything, up to a point where the term is becoming meaningless.

Passed few days have been really really juicy for the crypto space. Purchase popcorn futures while you can.

Was excited when I learned about Bitcoin, how it's 'cash you can email'.

Struggled to ever see the point of NFT's - at least as anything beyond 'trading cards' (which granted have their place).

No problem with the hype moving on. Leaves a cleaner space behind for more compelling innovations to gain some limelight.

But think about the money laundering industry...

And Sesame Street just announced its NFT, long after the hype has passed. I knew they were desperate for funding when they let HBO get first shot at new episodes, but I figured that solved things.

There are lots different scams to pull, and you can't know which ones they'll be pulling until you get further into it. Suppose you say "sure I'll sell, how much will you pay?" "Oh lots of money, I represent Nigerian princes of limitless wealth, but first you must convert your artworks to NFTs." "Sure thing, how?" "I am expert in this process, you just need to pay me the gas fees required to mint the NFTs". From here they can go a few ways. They could just quote a standard market rate in gweis, and you'll be like "in what?", and they'll explain that a gwei is a billionth of an Ether, a trivial amount, and you'll google all that and determine "oh yeah, of course people pay gas fees to mint NFTs in gweis", so you ask "ok, how do I send you gweis?" They could send you to a scam site that will try to drain whatever source of money you tried to buy gweis with, or they could tell you legitimately, then you send them your gweis, and they could just fuck off with your money and celebrate a scam well done. But if they have your gas fees, they could keep it going by explaining the prince is eager to buy the NFTs, now you just need to create an account on the NFT marketplace he uses, which you'll google and realize "well of course I need to gwei up for a marketplace account", so maybe you send more gweis to the scammer to create the account, or the scammer sends you to a third party site from which they get a referral commission, but ideally the scammer sends you to a sham NFT marketplace that they run and keep the proceeds from. Then they could fuck off with even more of your money and celebrate a scam well done. But since you're in this deep, they're going to milk it, and explain how the prince has transferred a trillion gweis to the marketplace to buy your NFTs, all you need to do is list them on the marketplace. I'm guessing you can see where this is headed...listing them on the marketplace requires a listing fee! Google confirms all this is perfectly normal. You're hesitant, but the prince is a busy man, and in a hurry to close the transaction. This is not just a one time deal, he's an ongoing benefactor to a select group of Instagram AI artists who are now fabulously wealthy...but he can't be inconvenienced with delays like this! He's being driven to one of his jets, and if you don't list the NFTs by takeoff time, the deal will be scuttled!!

I'll preface this by saying that I'm not a crypto fan, but I felt that NFTs were at least a promising use case for blockchain (* in addition to money, to avoid derailing this discussion).

They solve a real world problem of ownership of digital assets in an interesting way. We need a solution here and NFTs proposed an "open" one. I wish we keep exploring this space.

Oh, integrating a form of gambling/pyramid scheme into your app was a bad idea? What a surprise!

I'm no NFT cheerleader, but I do bemoan the failure of yet another attempt to provide artists with revenue.

NFTs were always daft, but the fiction, as fiction often does, spoke to a real need.

I'll be honest, it hurts me to see people shit on something, likely because of the sentiment towards NFTs at the moment. It's definitely not the first time I've seen a lot of smart people on HN look at things in an off-way. There are bad actors, there are bad actors everywhere with any physical goods as well. I'm just trying to build something I enjoy and others will too. That something happens to use NFTs.

Something is off. Given Meta's ambitions with the metaverse, shutting this down seems contrary to how Meta is thinking of NFT art? Does this mean there's no place for NFT art in the metaverse? Or did something real shady happen in the plaftorm; data that shows people are susceptible to buying NFTs are exorbitant prices, and Instagram wants to stop this behaviours before market education kicks in?

But what will I right-click-save-as now?

you couldn't do anything with it, just display it, what's the point then if you can't trade it or sell it.

Socialize all NFTs! Socialize Instagram and implement NFTs -- features that the world has waited for.

And nothing of value was lost.

>“You’re not thinking in the long run. What if you would have said goodbye to the internet when the bubble exploded back in the 2000s? There would be no Google. Or Meta whatsoever,” she said.

She says that like it would’ve been a bad thing.

nature is healing

This is good for bitcoin.

>This is a breaking story and was updated.

Really? Will nftnow.com be sending their helicopter to the Meta headquarters?