Last month we found out that Instagram is
Instagram boss Adam Mosseri shared a video on Twitter and (naturally)
“In the future we’ll have three different feeds in Home,” he said, referring to the main tab of the app where your (currently non-chronological) grid and story feeds live. “The first we’ll call Home — which is the Instagram experience you know today, where we rank content based on how interested we think you are in each and every post, to try to make the most of your time.”
The second, he explained, will be Favorites — a “subset” you can customise to keep a closer eye on posts from certain users you don’t want to miss a post from, like family and friends or Phoebe Bridgers. And the third — drumroll please — is Following, a feed of posts from accounts you follow, in chronological order by time posted. What a concept!
There’s a monkey-paw caveat, of course: Mosseri noted that the Home option “is going to have more and more recommendations over time.” Translation? Probably way more posts in your main feed from accounts you don’t actually follow. If the algorithm curating my Explore page is any kind of guide, I’m looking forward to those “recommendations” constantly backsliding into gross dieting infographics and month-old TikToks no matter how much I try to make it show me dogs and memes.
But most importantly, Instagram has listened to the users who have
“It’s important to me that people feel good about the time that they spend in the app,” Mosseri said. “And I think giving people ways to shape Instagram into what’s best for them is one of the best ways to pursue that goal.”
That comment feels a lot like a nod to parent company Meta’s reputation for making people feel bad — whether it’s
Now, if they can just add a chronological option for Facebook’s News Feed instead of the rage-bait firehose, we’ll really be getting somewhere.