Reflectionscommunity, Flickr, Fotografia, Glass, Instagram, social network

Goodbye Instagram, Hello Glass

July 29, 2026July 30, 2026 by Maurizio Agelli

I started sharing my photographs on Instagram in 2015. At that time I was still using Flickr, but I had the feeling it had lost much of its original momentum, as interest within the photography community gradually declined. So I moved to Instagram.

Instagram was different: simpler and more immediate. There was one feature that won me over from the very beginning: it only displayed square images. It almost felt as if it had been designed specifically for my medium-format film scans.

Of course, I knew that a platform built primarily for smartphones was hardly the ideal place to publish photographs from my archive. But I liked the square format, and I enjoyed pretending that Instagram had been created especially for photographers working in 6×6.

Then things began to change.

First came support for rectangular images. Then came Stories, an endless stream of content designed to shift attention away from photographs. Finally, Reels arrived, completely transforming the experience of using the platform.

Instagram was no longer a community. It had become a system designed to maximise engagement. Photography was no longer the goal, it had simply become a tool for keeping users on the platform for as long as possible.

No, there was no need for another TikTok.

That was when I discovered Glass.

More than a social network, Glass is an attempt to bring back the original spirit of online communities. Its goal is not to help people build an audience, but to connect photographers who share a genuine passion for photography.

As the Glass Manifesto puts it:

“Glass is a community, not an audience”

There is certainly some truth in that statement. It doesn’t feel as though you’re publishing photographs for an engagement-driven algorithm, but for people who are genuinely interested in sharing and appreciating each other’s work.

There is another sentence from the Glass Manifesto that particularly resonated with me. Paraphrased, it suggests that after spending time on the platform, you should feel inspired and enriched, rather than simply entertained.

That was exactly my impression from the very first days. The first thing that struck me was the overall quality of the photographs being shared. You’ll find photographers with very different approaches, from landscape and street to analogue and conceptual work, and interactions tend to feel far more genuine. There is no obsession with likes or follower counts. In fact, Glass doesn’t even display the total number of likes or followers.

Glass is ad-free and does not rely on collecting user data to fund its business. Instead, it operates on a subscription model, which I believe is reasonably priced considering what the platform offers. A free trial is available, and if you’re not satisfied, you can request a full refund. For those who wish to support the project further, there’s also a Patron membership, which provides a few additional benefits, such as early access to new features.

Using Glass

Glass lets you upload high-quality photographs without forcing you to resize them to just a few thousand pixels, as Instagram does. Images are uploaded at their original resolution and displayed with minimal compression, while the original files remain inaccessible to other users. Glass also provides a Lightroom Classic plugin that lets you publish photographs directly from your catalog.

Each photograph can include a description and up to three tags, selected from a predefined list of categories. Glass also automatically extracts and displays selected EXIF data alongside the description, including the capture date, camera model, and lens used.

Photographs can be organized into Series, Glass’s equivalent of albums. Each Series can have its own description and a custom image order, making it an excellent way to tell a story or present a photographic project. A photograph can belong to only one Series. Although this may seem restrictive at first, I believe it’s actually a thoughtful design choice that prevents unnecessary duplication and encourages a more coherent organization of your work.

Glass’s search function relies heavily on artificial intelligence and, in my opinion, remains the platform’s weakest point. For example, I tried searching for photographs of specific cities and geographic areas, but the results were often rather imprecise. It performs better when searching for generic subjects or broader concepts. This is probably the area where Glass still has the greatest room for improvement.

There’s also a very useful Explore tab, where photographs and photographers are hand-picked by the Glass team, making it easy to discover inspiring new work.

As for the social features, you can follow other photographers and interact through comments and appreciations on individual photographs. Glass deliberately leaves out many of the features that have become standard on mainstream social platforms: no private messaging, no Stories, no videos and (most importantly) no engagement-driven algorithm deciding what you should see.

No algorithm?

Well, not exactly.

There is an algorithm, but it’s remarkably simple and transparent: the main feed displays the photographs of the people you follow in strict chronological order.

The same approach obviously wouldn’t work for the Explore feed, otherwise users would be overwhelmed by a continuous stream of images, many of which would inevitably go unnoticed. Some form of selection is necessary. The difference is that Explore isn’t curated by an engagement-driven algorithm, but by the Glass team itself. It’s a choice that perfectly reflects the platform’s philosophy: prioritising the quality of the selection over the optimisation of engagement.

Final thoughts

Of course, Glass isn’t perfect. Besides the limitations of its search function, I’d love to see discussion groups dedicated to specific photographic topics. At the moment, conversations can only take place around individual photographs.

Beyond that, these are minor shortcomings. After spending years on Flickr and Instagram, Glass is the first platform that has given me back the feeling of sharing photographs in a positive and inspiring environment. And today, that’s more than enough for me.

I’d like to end with another sentence from the Glass Manifesto, one that perfectly captures my own experience with the platform:

“You should feel better after spending time on Glass, not worse.”

My photos on Glass

https://glass.photo/maurizioagelli

Goodbye Instagram, Hello Glass

Using Glass

No algorithm?

Final thoughts

My photos on Glass

Further reading