I heard about this book about Instagram from a bookstagram account on Instagram (no surprise there) and of course, my interest was piqued.

No Filter is a business memoir, charting the rise of Instagram and its complicated relationship with its users. If you’re looking to find out:

• What feedback Ariana Grande gave Instagram when she met them
• Why the Kardashians hopped on the bandwagon so early
• Why Instagram changed its feed from chronological to magic algorithm
• Why Instagram introduced Instagram Stories
• What Instagram actually did when Taylor Swift was being inundated by snake emojis

and other bits of trivia, this book is for you. Written in one narrative covering Instagram’s starting and ending slightly after the two original founders left Instagram by Facebook, No Filter takes the reader behind the scenes and shows us how Instagram used to work.

For me, the most interesting part of the book was seeing how Instagram was shaped by its users. As a regular Instagram user, I’ve definitely felt the impact of Instagram on my social media life (and real life as I try to take nice photos for the ‘gram) but I never really thought that the relationship went both ways. As it turns out, in the early years, Instagram was very shaped by its users and the type of community the team wanted to build. It’s fascinating (and a little scary) to see how each side drove each other to create the Instagram experience that we’re familiar with.

Another interesting thing I noted was that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t come off great here despite the fact that he made a good first impression. Instagram agreed to Facebook’s acquisition offer because they were told they could be an independent company, but as time went on, Zuckerberg got paranoid about Instagram ‘cannibalising’ users and social media time from Facebook and that led to a lot of friction.

Overall, if you’re interested in social media and the makings of an addictive social network, or if you’re just interested in the tea behind Instagram, No Filter is the book for you.