Instagram chief warns algorithm opt-out risks "much worse" user experience

The boss of Instagram has dismissed calls for a return to chronological feeds as coming from a "very vocal minority," warning that switching off recommendations would leave the average user with a "much worse" experience.

Adam Mosseri made the comments during a briefing with journalists in Australia, weighing in on the Australian government's proposal to let users opt out of algorithmic recommendations altogether and only see posts from those they follow.

"The average user experience gets much worse," he said. "If you go to a chronological feed, it ends up getting overwhelmed with content from companies, brands, and publishers. Creators get drowned out, and then your friends get drowned out even more."

Mosseri added that chronological feeds favour those who post most often, which is rarely the average user.

"What ends up happening is the best way to get more reach is just to post more often, and those who can afford to post the most often do and then therefore get the most reach," he said. "And it turns out your friends post a lot less than creators, who post a lot less than brands and companies."

He said engagement falls as a result, with people spending less time on the app.

"What happens is people become a bit less interested in the experience and they use it a lot less, which then means that there's less reach to go around, and people start to get more and more mad about the fact that their reach is going down because the overall pie gets smaller."

Australia's proposal, dubbed "My Feed, My Way," would require platforms to prompt users to choose between an algorithmic feed and one showing only accounts they follow, as part of the government's wider Digital Duty of Care legislation. 

Experts told The Daily Influence the shift could make existing audiences more valuable, but leave emerging creators struggling to get discovered and brands more reliant on paid reach.

Nathan Powell, co-founder and chief product and strategy officer at creator marketing platform Fabulate, told The Daily Influence the shift could compound the problem Mosseri is warning about, entrenching whichever creators and brands already have the biggest followings.

"A follow-only feed rewards creators who have already built an audience, while recommendation gives the next creator an opportunity to build one," he said. "If discovery becomes less important, you potentially hand an advantage back to the biggest creators, publishers and brands simply because they already have distribution."

Algo Confessions

Mosseri was in Australia to launch Algo Confessions, a new short-form series in which local personalities explain how Instagram's algorithm shapes their feeds, alongside Your Algorithm, a feature letting users view and edit their own. 

He also took time to address claims that the platform is addictive.

The tech giant settled a lawsuit last month over allegations its platforms were designed to be addictive to teenagers, agreeing to pay $17 billion and overhaul how young people use Instagram and Facebook, while continuing to deny wrongdoing.

"I don't believe Instagram is addictive – I know that is controversial to say – I do think we often in English anyway conflate the way we colloquially use the word addicted… like 'I'm addicted to this show and I'm binge watching it, which is not good for me'," he said, adding that clinically defined addictions carry withdrawal symptoms that social media does not produce. "Those things are different."