Instagram boss warns users will be 'overwhelmed' without algorithm

As the Australian parliament considers new rules for opting out of the social media algorithm, the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, has warned most users do not enjoy what they find on the other side.The federal government unveiled a proposal this week to force platforms to give users the choice, via push notifications, to opt out of the algorithm that curates their feed and instead view posts chronologically.It is part of a long-awaited Digital Duty of Care framework, designed to shift responsibility onto big tech to proactively reduce harms, or face $100 million fines.Mr Mosseri weighed in to the debate indirectly, during a rare Australian press briefing today, intended to promote the platform's new short-form series Algo Confessions, as well as the Your Algorithm feature, which theoretically allows users to see and even edit their algorithm.A Meta spokesman told reporters on the call that the Instagram chief would not be commenting on the government's proposal, but Mr Mosseri volunteered his view on chronological feeds.Citing the company's experience in other countries, he said "the average user experience gets much worse"."If you go to a chronological feed, it ends up getting overwhelmed with content from companies, brands, and publishers," he said."Creators get drowned out, and then your friends get drowned out even more."The reason, he said, was that the best way to achieve reach in a chronological feed was to post more often, and businesses could afford to post more often than ordinary people.While he did not provide figures, he said engagement ultimately fell by as much as 50 per cent."You miss a lot more content … and you spend a lot less time on the platform," he said.Adam Mosseri says most people are not satisfied after opting out of the algorithm. (ABC Radio Canberra: Hannah Walmsley)For the people shaping these laws, causing users to spend less time on the platform is one of the main goals, but Mr Mosseri said crucially, user satisfaction also suffered."We ask people every day how satisfied they are with the experience," he said."Both at the aggregate [experience], 'Are you satisfied?' and at the specific post, 'Was this worth your time?', those numbers fall off a cliff."So, there's this interesting tension between what an individual might want and what happens when you actually explode that to the entire community."Mr Mosseri said he assumed the "passionate few" who really wanted to opt out of the algorithm were happy with the choice, but those users were in the minority.Australians can opt out of their algorithm now, but few realise itWhat few users realise is that a chronological feed is already available on Instagram globally, including in Australia.On Instagram, users can tap on the logo to access a drop-down menu, which offers a "following" setting.If selected, the user's feed transforms into a stream of posts from followed accounts in reverse chronological order, minus the algorithmic recommendations.But unlike in the Netherlands, the feed reverts to using the algorithm when you close and re-open the app.Mr Mosseri agrees the option to change to a chronological feed could be made more known to users. (Reuters: Elizabeth Frantz)Mr Mosseri said, although he did not have figures, that uptake in Australia had been low."An educated guess would be in the low single-digit percentages," he said.He said users probably did not know about the option, but "that's not on purpose"."I'm not trying to hide it…. I think we can make it more prominent," he said."Instagram is too complicated, if you ask me."There's a lot of things to squeeze into the page … so we've been trying not to just add more buttons for everything."There's definitely room to improve the discoverability of that."The federal government's My Feed, My Way bill comes less than a year after a court decision brought about similar rules in the Netherlands.Mr Mosseri does not believe the platform is addictive. (Unsplash: Katka Pavlickova)Since 2023, the European Union has had laws in effect for 27 member states requiring large platforms such as Instagram to give users the option of a chronological feed.Under those rules, the choice must also be made accessible to users, rather than being buried in settings controls, where many users might never find it.But in October 2025, a Dutch court went a step further, ordering platforms provide chronological feeds as a default.This morning, Mr Mosseri said in the absence of defaults, uptake would probably remain low."Anything that isn't the default just doesn't get used the majority of the time, which is why defaults are so important," he said.The federal government's push on chronological feeds was not originally slated as a centrepiece of the Digital Duty of Care, but the idea gained prominence after Meta's landmark $23 billion US court settlement last month, in which the company also agreed to allow US teens to choose a chronological feed.The suit, brought by 29 US states, was premised on the accusation that Instagram's parent company had intentionally designed its platforms to addict young people.Mr Mosseri said he did not believe Instagram was addictive, although that might be "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,'… [as opposed to] clinical addiction," he said."I just think those things are different."Mr Mosseri acknowledged that social media users were increasingly frustrated by the "black box" nature of the algorithms that decide what they see."What we are trying to figure out now is how do we bring back more agency, bring back more transparency, bring back more control?" He said.He said ultimately, Instagram wants people to enjoy the app, and that the company needed to take "a long view" when it came to how much time people using it."We try to optimise for things like… satisfaction, preference, which I think [it's] hard to imagine benefit from people compulsively using the platform."