Modern-day social media platforms have made it a business to tell us what they think we want to see. From a conceptual point-of-view, it makes sense. Posts or profiles you interact with frequently could be seen as things you might want to see more of. Makes sense, right? But now, it looks like Instagram wants to give you some control over its algorithm.
Instagram giving users control over its algorithm
In a post on Threads by Instagram head Adam Mosseri, Instagram is giving some control of its algorithm back to users. To do that, Instagram is bringing “Your Algorithm” to the main feed. It shows users what Instagram thinks you’re interested in, but at the same time, users get to change that if they want.
For now, Mosseri says the feature is limited to just topics. However, he says that Instagram is working to introduce support for people, moods, or vibes, content types, and more. And if we’re reading between the lines, Mosseri seems to have laid the “blame” of algorithmic feeds on TikTok.
In his post he writes, “TikTok built its main feed on this model from day one. YouTube made the switch in 2016. X and Threads followed in 2023. Instagram moved more gradually — recommendations at the end of feed in 2020, then woven into the feed itself the year after.” He also talked about what these algorithms did to a person’s agency.
“But who you follow used to be a meaningful tool people had for shaping their own experience, and as recommendations took over the main feed that tool quietly stopped working. The conversation with the system became one-sided. The system learns from what you tap, watch, and share, but you don’t really get to tell it what you want,” he added.
The value of algorithms
That being said, while there is something of a sinister nature to algorithms, which tell us what we want to see, there is value in them. It is why the Trump administration pushed so hard to separate TikTok US from its Chinese owner, ByteDance. They never really wanted the app, they wanted the algorithm behind it. It was also one of the reasons why China was reluctant to let it go. Not because they wanted a social media app full of people dancing and reacting to videos. But because they saw the value in the algorithm and how it could push content to the masses.
The post Instagram Is Finally Letting You Control Your Algorithm, and TikTok Is Why appeared first on Android Headlines.
