In a February 2024 interview with People, Erin Napier accused Instagram of suppressing her Osprey-centered posts and compared their engagement with her other photos. “[Osprey] posts get a tiny fraction of the views that my usual posts do, which is disturbing,” she said. “I think social media should be the adult town square for sharing information. But if you’re only able to share selective information, that’s scary.”
Scrolling through the “Home Town: Take Over” star’s Instagram page, you’ll notice that her posts typically receive 20,000 to 50,000 likes. While Napier’s original Osprey posts gained a similar amount of attention, receiving over 25,000 likes, a graphic promoting ticket sales for an Osprey event and a clip from one of the organization’s panels have received less than half of the likes. Napier attributes this discrepancy to Instagram, a platform that continues to come under fire for allegedly shadowing posts and users.
If you’re unfamiliar with it, “shadowbanning” is when a site or app limits the reach of someone’s posts without notifying the user. Due to the backlash they received around the practice, Instagram introduced a feature in 2022 that allows users to see if posts are no longer being recommended and why. It’s unclear if Napier utilized this feature to confirm that the app suppresses her posts, but her experience goes beyond these engagement differences.
