It’s hard to remember now, but for the first three years of its existence, Instagram was ad-free.
When it finally incorporated ads, shortly after Facebook bought the photo-sharing platform for $1 billion in 2012, the language around the rollout promised users it wouldn’t be too much, too soon: “We’ll focus on delivering a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community,” the company said in a 2013 blog post announcing the change.

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