When Growth Punishes UX: Lessons from Instagram's Repost Button

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# When Growth Punishes UX: Lessons from Instagram's Repost Button

Instagram just shipped a case study in how growth can punish UX. The repost button now sits where comments used to live—and the fallout is a masterclass in what happens when metrics trump muscle memory.

What's Going Wrong

The changes seem small, but the impact is significant:

Mis-taps everywhere: Users try to comment, accidentally hit repost, and feel tricked. Years of muscle memory betrayed in an instant.

No education: There's no warning, no one-time tooltip, nothing to help users understand the change. People are left asking, "What did I just do?"

Weak feedback: The "reposted" state is barely visible on many videos. Users can't even confirm what happened.

High-frequency action replaced by a risky one: Commenting is frequent and low-stakes. Reposting is infrequent and high-stakes. Swapping their positions creates frustration spikes.

The Uncomfortable Truth

This might be strategic. Reposts rise. Engagement metrics improve. Dashboards look healthier.

But trust falls. User frustration builds. The UX tax accumulates silently until it doesn't.

Metric lift today. User erosion tomorrow.

Make Undo Obvious

If you're building products, here's what this teaches us:

Users develop habits over years. Moving high-frequency actions breaks trust and creates friction that no onboarding can fix.

Comment and repost serve different purposes with different consequences. They shouldn't compete for the same real estate.

If you must make changes, educate users. Show them what's different, where things moved, and how to undo mistakes.

When users make accidental actions, the path to reversal should be immediate and clear—not buried three menus deep.

The PM Dilemma

This is the tension every product manager faces: ship for adoption now, or protect user trust first?

There's no universal answer. But the best products find ways to grow without making users feel tricked.

Which side are you on?

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Almas Ali was part of the August 2025 cohort at Curious PM, alongside 15 other talented participants.