Are 90 minute Instagram videos too long? And a fan fiction outage is causing panic

In our time is a world class seminar every week. Why was Jeremy a lonely snail? What were lines doing in York in the third century? I'm Misha Glenny and every week I'm joined by expert guests to explore the ideas that shape our world. It's one of the first times really that you consistently see someone painting teeth. I know that sounds bonkers. If I was going to define mathematics, I would say it's the study of structure. In our time, listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a cbc podcast. Look, most of us open Instagram and do the same thing, right? You keep scrolling, you keep scrolling until something grabs you. Usually, creators try to make something that's going to grab you really fast. But now, Instagram is testing something that's a little bit different. They're betting that audiences might be interested in videos that last up to 90 minutes. I'm LMN up to Mahmoud and this is commotion. I got Kate Lindsay here. I got Nicholas Croix here. Hello to both of you. Nice to have you guys here. Listen, I want to get into whether this is going to change our relationship to social media, but maybe Nicholas, I'll start with the nuts and bolts of this. You get the announcement from Instagram that they're launching this trial. People will be allowed to post videos up to 90 minutes. What's your reaction to that announcement? Yeah, my immediate reaction is that this is Instagram kind of joining the scrum with YouTube and Netflix in the sense of they're trying to expand their footprint into the creator economy, right? Specifically among video podcasters, these long form YouTubers. So, you might have noticed something that is called the clip economy, right? One of the key ways that video podcasters build audiences today is creating very sticky moments that then they clip and share it through Instagram or TikTok. Hopefully it goes really wide and hopefully they think if you see it, you'll be intrigued enough to follow through and listen to the full thing. Maybe become a listener, maybe become a viewer, maybe become somebody that can monetize a bit of the long term. And so, by allowing this new format, it's kind of them closing the loop a little bit or attempting to. So, if you see something that you're interested in of the clip, hopefully you can just take one more one less step to get to that show. And Instagram can then sort of like assume and absorb that relationship and which they can make money off of. And so, that's kind of what I sort of viewed as as. Listen, as a purveyor and a participant in the clip economy, I do this podcast. And as a part of that, we post some of our clips. And, you know, the instructions are always like, "Hey, if you like this boy, you're going to love the full conversation." And now, that's one of the options. You can post the entire conversation for people to just watch on Instagram. What are the kinds of things that people you anticipate will be posting to listen? I think it'll be a lot of like YouTubers podcasters that have these longer episodes already distributed elsewhere. I think they will find it a pretty natural place to sort of add to the secondary home. Instagram also seems to be opening up the idea of people creating longer-form content natively for the platform. There's episodic reels, there's this new 90-minute future. I think Instagram has much less intentionality around us. I think it's a bit of a spray spray. So, the real answer is TBD, we shall see. I think actually sometimes I need that reminder that, you know, sometimes it's a step to go, "This is a strategy and it's going to do this." And sometimes they're like, "Let's just help for the best. Give those people the option and then hope for the best." Much like life. Kate, what occurred to you when you heard that Instagram is doing this? I think this is kind of a little bit of blood in the water for the air, a golden era of short-form content. We've already been seeing this like slow encroachment of long-form with just video podcasts in general, the rise of something like Twitch. But I think what's worth remembering about Instagram is so many of the, they are good at following, I would trust them when they're following a trend, like a major trend that requires them to change the whole medium of their platform because the only reason we have Instagram stories is because they saw Snapchat and said, "We want to do that, the only reason we have Reels is because they saw TikTok. I want to do that." And so I think, like Nick said, they're seeing YouTube and they're like, "Okay, well now we're going to do that." And in the past, they've had some missteps, but for the most part, those major platformships have ended up paying off despite my reluctance to ever use Reels. So I think it's worth considering. I want to come back to that frame in just a moment, that idea that is blood in the water for short-form content, because in some ways that lands as a relief for me, but I want to come back to sort of talk about like what evidence we see for that. But Nick, let me maybe ask you, like, do you think Instagram is tapping into some kind of deeper, cultural hunger that says people are actually like really wanting longer and longer content? That's something interesting. We're going to figure out a question. Well, first of all, I don't think Instagram is the right team to tap into that. I think it's really right. They're just kind of responding to what everybody else is doing. But in terms of like, is there a kind of larger cultural hunger for it? I think it's always been. I think it's always been validated. But I was thinking that there's a split in the availability of human appetites, right? Like, we do live in a world of dominance short-form content. And that is largely different by these digital media platforms. These predatory social media platforms seizing on our like, I want the cookie, I want the cookie, like part of our brains. And they've been really good at giving us cookie. But at the same time, there's this universe around Instagram and these platforms that have been always there. They've always been books. There's always been movies. And I think it's sort of interesting because today, the two biggest, among the two biggest movies of the year, are movies made by YouTubers who chose to make two hour long movies. That's right. Two of the biggest, most busiest movies of the year is our three hours long in the Odyssey. And you can see everything. So like, that hunger is always there. I think it's really a question about like, like, how much we want either, how much we want to balance that in both times and what the opportunities afford it to us to plug into one versus the other. I mean, this is maybe the place I wanted to go with this conversation, Kate. It's like this idea that like, I think I've been trained and on this larger cultural understanding that, hey, our attention spans are shrinking and social media is just responding to that. And they're just doing the thing that makes sense to these attention spans. But also, I've read McClune, right? I've read the idea that like, you know, like the way that you serve me information is going to structure my relationship with that information. And so if you keep only offering the opportunity to engage in these like short bursts of information or short bursts of video, then the thing that's going to happen is I go, okay, I guess that's the thing that you're training me to do. But if suddenly, like, you just give the option that people can post these longer videos, I can train myself to go, I can also respond to this because the medium is like to semester, the medium transforms the person that is receiving that information. And so do you think Instagram is kind of signaling, but they understand that there's something wider in the culture. But you don't have to just surrender to the idea that people have short attention spans. And actually, they don't. You just have only been serving them that. I mean, I agree with everything you're saying. I don't believe Instagram is motivated by our well-being to that extent. I do think that they are seeing this solely as a play for YouTube, the same that Netflix is doing and other platforms. But in terms of what you're saying about what is happening with like how it feels to consume short form content, I think like Nick was saying there's there is always this appetite for long form. Short form was there and really grabby, but it just no one has ever been like, I scored Instagram for two hours and feel really good now. Like everyone feels bad. Like you're saying, everything must be distilled to like grabbies, often rage-bady. It doesn't feel good to consume. And I also think on the creator side, having to distill your message and your work, especially if you're in a space where that's more thoughtful and complex to something grabby, short and rage-bady, can backfire and limits you. And so I think, yeah, if you have the opportunity to be more verbose with the things you're trying to communicate, it does feel like a great opportunity to get the chance to take that and maybe now that'll start being prioritized in the algorithm. Nickles, the one telling us to that is that this is a medium and a platform that we use on our phone, right? Like it's not, like I take your point about the Odyssey and you can see everything being the biggest movies of the year, both clocking it three hours long. I got to go to a movie theater to experience that particular thing. A book is a specific technology that lets me not look at other stuff while I'm doing that. But the phone is kind of an arena for my attention in general. So like the idea that they're introducing this on a platform or a place like you're holding your phone is that an argument that they're saying that even on your phone, you know, there is still the potential for this much longer attention span. There's always been that potential for longer attention span on the phone, right? You have audiobooks, you always had music, you always had, but you could listen to your podcast on your phone anytime you wanted to. And so I think it's a bit of a new question. It's Instagram trying to carve into a space where they have no business and no skillset doing so. And so I don't know. If I was a bedding man and I have a bedding man, I would kind of look, I'm a major in this would not be a future on Instagram in like six months. It's just something that meta does in general. They kind of cop another future, another company's doing. They make a big whore about it. And then when you're distracted something else, it fizzles away. And you go like, what was that thing again six months ago? I don't remember. Kate, is that your read on this Tuesday? Look, we're going to test this out, and then it's not going to be around for much longer. I mean, they've done that with plenty of things. So it wouldn't be out of character. And I also have trouble with this question knowing I'm coming from a very millennial mindset of like never wanting to watch anything long form on my phone. Like that is a laptop activity, but I'm aware that uh, yeah, I don't buy a plate ticket with my phone. Totally agreed. Yeah, but I acknowledge that I do think it is more normal for other generations. And so my curiosity about this is Instagram. has also launched a kind of TV app, and we already watch YouTube primarily on our smart TVs. And so that is a place where we are already trained, I wish it was a better word, but trained to consume long-form social media content that way. And so I wonder if the idea of opening the Instagram app on my TV just feels to dystopian stills, but if it's going to work anywhere, at least for the millennials, I think that's where it would work. I will tell you this, I do appreciate the reality check from both of you, because I'm walking here and being like, so they've read Neil Postman, right? And they said that actually we need to improve society. And then one of the ways to improve society is at least give them the option of longer-form content. And both of you're saying, no, this is about the competition. This is about the idea that like, there's a Netflix in the space, there's a YouTube in the space, an Instagram is aware that when you put down Instagram, that's the place that you go, so maybe they're trying to some kind of Hail Mary, I mean, in order to keep your attention there. I want to ask both of you, there's like a sort of nostalgia, a play for you of like, is there a better period of time on Instagram than now that you're like, you know what, bring that back. And I'll go first and offer that I miss what Instagram used to end. This is the thing that I talk about all the time. Like, you used to just be able to reach the end of the scroll of Instagram. It was not until later in the life of the platform that they were like, actually we're going to introduce the infinite scroll. And you just keep scrolling and then the feed will refresh all the time. And I think that has made my experience on the thing markedly worse. Nicholas, what about you? Is there like a, bring that back part of Instagram? Yeah, this is a, this particular feeling is well, I do nostalgia, right? And I don't, I don't really subscribe to that feeling whatsoever. I think what we are, I think that was a good time on Instagram, but what we actually said in the nostalgic for it is like this moment in history where we did not yet know, or we're still now used to that tech companies are completely, you know, motivated to be predatory. We did not know that they could be motivated to be evil. And that is what we are pining for because we could in theory, vibe code your way into a better Instagram that you could make just for 40 of your best friends. But we don't want that. Like we want something that was massive. I think that Instagram and all these other companies also kind of prey on is this notion that we too could be super famous for look at them. So it's like, we are so 10 years in advance of this of that moment. And, and I think we're so shaken by it. I do not want to forget is this feeling that these people will betray me. So I would not be this, I refuse to be nostalgic. I do not want to forget the feeling that these people would betray me is such a reality check for me personally that I'm going to be walking around for the rest of the day thinking about that. Kate, what about you? Are you a subscriber to millennial nostalgia? Are you like Nicholas going? Elemin, get a grip. No. I'm more so a I'm a subscriber to it. And, you know, we have been somewhat downers on this topic that I actually am quite excited about if the return of long forum comes back. I think it's just I don't trust any company to usher it in. In terms of the good, what could make Instagram good? I think in a world where we all are talking about wanting to have less screen time, we the idea of what a good app means is very different because I think if we want to have less screen time, a good app would actually be a bad app. Like, it would be chronological, it would be a chronological feed. It would end. It would be one that we're like, okay, I don't actually want to spend hours on here. That's what I used to be. You know? Yeah. So I'm going to get off. And so it would have to it's funny. It's like, I don't think they're good old days. It's like, you have to actually just make it worse so I could be freed from this. I think there's always something that reminds me at the end of the day that as much as we talk about wanting a better app experience, there is eventually the part of you that yearns for freedom from the apps that comes out and says, and by better, I mean, make me not want to be on this please. That would really be the thing that would help me out the most. I really appreciate your time. I really appreciate your insights. You guys, this has been wonderful. I don't think Instagram is going to, you know, save humanity anytime soon. So I've been reality checked. But I really appreciate your time. Thank you guys so much for coming on today. Thank you. Good to see you. Thank you again. Kate Lindsey is a culture writer and the co-founder of Embedded a Newsletter about the internet which you can also get on Substack. Nicholas Quil is a culture critic at Vulture. He's based in Vancouver. In a world where the news feels bigger, louder, and harder to make sense of, Canadians need more than headlines. Hi, I'm Karen C. Olin, news reporter and host of the big story podcast from world shaping events to the everyday stories that spark debate. My team and I will explain what matters and why it matters to you. We're here to help you make sense of the news and give you the context you need for those kitchen table conversations trusted Canadian-focused, curious. Listen to the big story wherever you get your podcasts. How about let me know what my mood and this is commotion. Let me tell you about a plot twist that no one saw coming. AO3, which is the biggest fan fiction platform on the internet, went down last week after being hacked. This is the big deal. This is the website where people come together to share and to read fan written stories about their favorite characters and has got a truly wide range, like basically any character and basically any movie or TV show or video game you can think of. It's going to be on AO3. We are talking about a website that gets hundreds of millions of views a week. So we're going to went down. People noticed and they noticed really fast. Joining me now to explain why this feels like a little bit of an internet apocalypse from CBC books. Brigitte Ramanda's here. Hello Brigitte. Hello, thank you for having me. Hey, good to see you. How's it going? It's good. I'm glad to be here with you in the apocalypse. We are sitting around the fire and we are sharing stories of what it means to live through this apocalypse. Let's start with maybe let's give some context around your relationship with AO3, which I should also point out it stands for Archive of our own. That's what AO3 stands for. How often are you using AO3 up until it went down? Yes, I am an avid user self-admitted. I've been using it since I was a teenager. I think the platform started in 2008. I discovered it in 2013-2014 and really have been using it since to regulate my nervous system, honestly. I have three medicine guys. Exactly. I before the shutdown would read a thick in the morning before work and at least one thick before bed. The thing is I'm very fortunate that I read for a living. That's my day job. But with anything that is a hobby that once was a hobby that you turned into something you do for work, it can't be a hobby anymore. AO3 is one of the few spaces where I'm reading for the love of the game. So I'm on there quite a bit. I am obviously going to ask you what kind of fan fiction you're reading. If you're reading one in the morning and one in the evening, I'm going to ask you about what territory you're getting into here. Yeah. For sure. I'll tell you, because you're a friend. I started reading fanfics through the Glee fandom. That was where I started. That was my introduction. The thing that I really like about AO3 is that unlike conventional books, you can't really group them by genres. They're more so grouped by their volunteers called tag wranglers. And their job is to sort these fix into one things like relationships, characters, the fictional universe you're writing from. But also things based on what you desire as a reader. So things like alternate universes, stories where there's only one bed or fix it fix. Fixed fix, which are my personal favorite. There's nothing they can do. There's no other option. There's no option. Fixed fix. Fixed fix. Okay. So my favorite thing of all time is a 350,000 word C-faring epic. A C-faring epic based on the YA dystopian series The Maze Runner where a character in the main series dies. And in this he's revived and gets to live out his his his life with the love of his life. And so that's a fix it. You're taking something from the canon. And changing the direction. So for example, I can read, you know, a hunger game's thick where Roo doesn't die. Yeah. Where no one dies. Well, that feels a little that feels difficult. But I would like to like someone to fix Roo's death like that knocked me out. You know, I don't want to live through that ever again. Yeah. Okay. So that's what A or three does for people who have not maybe spent their time on on fan fiction websites. What's the thing that sets A or three apart from because there's so many other ones. So why are readers so loyal to A or three? You think? Yeah, I mean, I think a little bit about when I just said it's very prescriptive and it's organized. I know a lot of people were saying, just go to Wapad. And personally, I can't find anything on Wapad. Maybe it's a skill issue. Yeah. But I really love it. Wapad looks like a mess to me. Yeah. It looks there's a lot. It's just really hard to search based off of what you want specifically. So I think that's the first part. I think also there's a loyalty and a fan base around it because of the ethos that A or three was built upon, which is creating this space for more protected measures for fanfic writers and readers. It's a nonprofit website. So it's mainly run by volunteers. A lot of which are lawyers who will specifically protect writers because fanfic exists in this legal grace space area. And it's also arch of our own. It's based on a room of one's own by Virginia Woolf, which is this idea of creating a space and time and giving the resources to writers to explore things that might be taboo. But allowing that. And I think that's a really refreshing space to have a website that's not censored and not commodified. We don't have that a lot of times. So the thing you've described is as close as possible to a reader's utopia on the internet as possible. And then last Thursday, it goes down. What's the thing that happens? Like I want to talk to take me back to the Thursday. Yeah. What's the, how did you first of all, how'd you find out that it went down? Well, I was looking for my morning thick. I mean, I was doing my. You woke up in the morning. It's a part of your routine. I know. I was brushing my teeth and I opened my phone to go to A3 and find something to read for the day. Yeah. And I got a service error. And I didn't immediately panic because this has happened before. This has happened before where there's been shutdowns for like half a day or so. Yeah. But I was like, okay, I'll just get through the day. And then maybe it'll be fine. Yeah. And then midway through the day, my friend sent me the update that it might be two to four weeks. And then I turned into Paul Revere. I went around the building. I texted everyone I know who cares about this. And I was like, did you hear this? Because it's never been down for this long before. It was insanity. It just, it turned into insanity. So you're just knocking on the door and going, did you hear the news? And how do people receive that news? Because maybe they don't have the same relationship as you, you might. Yeah. Did you get the reactions you're looking for? As you're like, I did. I did. I did. I think the people in my circles are just as crazy for this. Yeah. For a three as I am. So the reaction I got was was pretty sympathetic and empathetic. So what's the thing that we know? What do we know about this outage? Yeah. So the lovely volunteers gave us an update. Okay. And they said that it's down for two to four weeks because of a security incident, which they're continuing to investigate. And that's why the site will be down for that long, because it's a precautionary measure. The most important thing to know is that no data was deleted. So none of the fix or any of the accounts are gone. Because we're talking about millions of words. Yeah, we're talking about the library of Alexandria here. Like this. That is so not burned. No, it will not. So the main thing that they said is if you're using your password for any other websites that you use on A03, change those. But they don't collect any data. They're like names even. So that's all good. But yeah, we're really settling in for like nofic November. Nofic November sounds like the worst time possible. The sadness in your voice as you just described that sound like a tragedy to me. Four weeks. I mean, listen, it's a long time in general. It's a long time, especially for you sitting there and going, I'm reading two fix a day, dude. That's 60 fix. I don't get to read during this month at minimum. How did how did people respond? Like how did A03 users respond when they heard not only is it down, it's down for like for for a while. Yeah, it was catastrophic. Yeah, it wasn't just in my immediate circles who I was telling as soon as I I went on the internet, it was like immediately just a swarm of beams and everyone crying collectively. I saw some really funny ones like comparing themselves to Penelope waiting for Odysseus to return from war. A lot of people who were saying, I guess I'll, I'll go read the books on my physical TBR, like I'll go read the books that I've been sitting on my shelves for months. Is that actually the relationship with people who service and find themselves spending so much time in A03 that they're like, oh, I did buy lots of physical books, but I'm not. I got to read this instead. I think so. I think that's been especially this year. I would I would credit that to Heated Rivalry. I've seen a lot of people who are like, I just want to read Heated Rivalry fanfiction and nothing else. But yeah, it's it's it's has been a big reaction. I keep opening that the the browser forgetting that all of this has happened and then I have to go through like all the stages of grief again. It's really it's quite a bit. But yeah, I think it's also we can commiserate together. So that's been the shared thing. And I get a friend of mine has downloaded Heated Rivalry fix and kindly sent me a Google drive. So that's what I'm using to tide over in this time. And I know a lot of other people are doing the same. The number of things that are occurring to me at the same time is actually quite wild. Number one, of course, there are Heated Rivalry fanfics because Jacob Tierney only gave us such a few amount of episodes. How could you Jacob Tierney? And so as a result, something has to fill the void because there's so much hunger for this. Number two, the someone said, we're just gonna need this. But this is this is this is Bridget's emotional support fanfic. And I'm going to download it to make sure that she has it, you know, as we kind of get going forward. What do you what do you think this this I would just going to be like, is it the kind of thing where a month so long for someone without fanfics that a competitor might emerge or that the fans might go somewhere else. Or we're talking about like a bunch of people who are like lighting fires and just waiting by the gates being like, whenever you're ready, let us back in. What's what's the vibe? I did like like a candle vigil on the first night that you're revealing something about me. Yeah, I say that the fandom has been really lovely and nice. And that lasted for about like two or three days before the internet does what the internet does. And it feels like we need an internet safety crash course again because people were opening Google Drive links from strangers and people they don't know and obviously getting hacked. Because they're so desperate for fix. Yes. And then on Tuesday, this mirror site called a three dot life popped up. Okay. And someone had essentially scraped a past version of the website and posted millions of these fix without the permission of authors. Oh. And then even went so far as to start selling AI generated audiobook versions of fix. Which is like the number one rule in fan fiction. No. Do not sell your work. Oh no. Okay. So it's a bit of a chaos situation. It's a chaos situation. It was taken down within the day because obviously people might support it. Yeah. But a lot of things are popping up and it's a bit worrisome. Okay. I think hold on. The idea that this is a bit worrisome feels bad. But also you feel like you have some confidence in the idea that a or three fans actually going to protect the the sanctity of the space. Yes. And I think the reason why it's taking so long is because you have volunteers who really care about it. Yeah. And believe in the ethos and the message of a or three itself of the archive. So I have hope at the end of the day that we'll just take this time. Everyone take a breather. Don't click suspicious links. And we'll we'll all be good and we'll all have our our nightly routine where we can read our lovely salacious stories together. So I'm learning that the nicest place on the internet went down and that people will sort of protect that niceness until it comes back soon. Yes. With shields and swords. Bridgett is really nice to have you on the show. Thank you so much for being your friend. Of course. Thank you for having me. Of course. Bridgett Ramonda is a producer with CBC Books. She joined me right here in our studio in Toronto. My name is Elimine Abdul Mahmoud. This show's clock of motion. We'll be back tomorrow. We'd love to see you then.