Instagram's Boss Just Made the Case Against His Own Algorithm
adam mosseri, the apparent tool heading up instagram for meta, just argued against letting you turn off the algorithm. in doing so he admitted exactly why the algorithm needs regulating. beyond that, his argument is just wholly idiotic.
what led to this admission? australia wants to force platforms to give users a real choice, one tap to switch off the utterly annoying algorithmic feed and see posts in the old school way. chronologically. imagine that! dear old adam does not like this concept. he says when people turn off the algorithm, engagement drops by as much as 50%. people spend a lot less time on the platform. their satisfaction "falls off a cliff." he offers all of this as evidence to argue the notion of opt-out is a bad idea.
slow down and look at what he actually said. people who turn off the algorithm use instagram less. to a company selling advertising against your attention, "you use it less" is the entire problem the algorithm exists to solve. he is not describing a worse experience for you. he is describing a worse outcome for meta, and hoping you will not notice the difference. the more time people spend doomscrolling instagram, the more annoying af advertisements for useless shit will end up in your feed.
to be fair, his actual argument is chronological feeds reward whoever posts the most. he claims brands and publishers will be able to drown out your friends. possibly. it still does not explain why everyone else should be denied the choice.
the reality is time on app is not the same as value to the user. an algorithm tuned to maximize how long you scroll is not tuned to make your life better. certainly those two goals overlap at times. when given the choice, people spend less time on instagram.
that is not a bug in the chronological feed. that is people, freed from the machine, choosing to put the phone down. it is because people opened the app, saw the updates from their friends and family, and then closed the app. there was no need to endlessly scroll, hoping to find a recent update from your friend across the pond on business.
notice the timing. this comes weeks after meta paid up to US$23 billion to settle claims from 29 us states that it deliberately designed its platforms to addict young people. in that settlement, meta agreed to give us teens a chronological feed. so the company will hand you the off switch when a court forces it, and argue against the off switch everywhere a court has not. it will also likely bury said off switch in some nigh-impossible to find part of settings.
then there is the smaller tell. mosseri admits the chronological feed already exists, but almost nobody uses it. only low single-digit percentages, and insists this is "not on purpose." cough BS cough. maybe. but a company that has mastered the art of making you tap exactly where it wants somehow could not make this one option easy to find. the same design genius keeping you scrolling could not manage a visible button on the main app screen. you can decide how much of that to be believed.
he also says instagram is not addictive, which is a strange hill to die on in the same month your employer wrote a US$23 billion check over that exact accusation.
the honest version of his whole argument is short.
the algorithm keeps you on the app longer than you would choose to stay on your own. he thinks this is a feature. the law calls it a harm.
the only real question is which one of them is describing your experience. you already know the answer. because given a choice, the vast majority of the population would choose a chronological feed and get two hours of their lives back every day.
