You can just tell Instagram’s algorithm what you want now

Instagram will let you change what its algorithm shows you on your main feed. It’s part of Your Algorithm, “now you can see the topics we think you’ll like, and edit, in all the major Instagram sites,” according to Instagram boss Adam Moseri. For now, the feature will only focus on topics, but Instagram is working to “support people’s requests, different ideas or tones, types of posts, and more.”

The company has been gradually offering users other algorithms on Instagram, having already launched the Your Algorithm section on your Reels feed and See page. With Wednesday’s announcement, Mosseri is taking the opportunity to gain a little wisdom. “This is the beginning of something bigger than form,” says Mosseri. “I believe it’s very important as a business to empower people to make Instagram a product that works for them, and for people to have more agency in their long-term spending.

Mosseri says that while algorithmic thinking is “a great way to really succeed in technology,” it also has “value” for what it did to “human society,” noting that the way people interact with these systems has been one-sided. “The system learns about what you capture, watch, and share, but you can’t say what you want. I think that’s part of what people feel when they’re uncomfortable with social media — not the content itself, but the feeling that it’s happening to them instead of just being themselves.”

For a long time, Mr. Mosseri says the layout models “were created by technology that people cannot see.” Now, however, he says LLMs can “look at groups of content and describe them in a language that people understand,” which gives Instagram “a way to show people what the system thinks they have, and a way to tell the system what they want.”