Instagram announced today that it’s bringing back a chronologically-ordered feed option, and the platform is also introducing a new feature to prioritize “favorites” in your feed.
Parent company Meta announced earlier today in a blog post, after years of ignoring users’ demands to bring back the popular feature.
“We want you to be able to shape Instagram into the best possible experience, and giving you ways to quickly see what you’re most interested in is an important step in that direction,” the company wrote.
In 2016, Instagram swapped its chronological feed for an algorithmic one, telling users that “the order of photos and videos in your feed will be based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting and the timeliness of the post.”
The company decided to focus on “optimizing the order,” but the switch turned out to be a nuisance to most users as the engagement-based ranking system led to days-old posts showing up in the feed instead of new content.
According to Business Insider, the move comes after former employee-turned whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked documents to the media and Congress last year that revealed, among other things, that Facebook (now known as Meta) employees were worried that an algorithm change would work to promote sensationalistic content.
While speaking to Congress in December 2021, CEO Adam Mosseri explained, “We’ve been focusing for a few years now on how to give people more control over their experience, like favorites, which puts accounts you favorite at the top of your feed.”
“Another we’ve been working on for months is a chron feed. I wish I had a specific month to give you, but right now, we’re aiming for early next year,” Mosseri said at the time.
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