Instagram Says ‘A Version’ Of Chronological Feed To Arrive In Early 2022
Photo 78274305 © Rvlsoft | Dreamstime.com
As recently as this June, Instagram head Adam Mosseri seemed more than sure—at least to the public eye—that the app would never bring back the chronological feed that longtime users miss and love, citing the platform’s fast-growing community as a key reason an algorithm that prioritizes posts works better.
But that was then and this is now. Those months back were a former life for the folks at Facebook, who haven’t just rebranded to Meta with a new mission since, but have also been at the center of scathing whistleblowing accounts.
And as Mosseri testified to lawmakers about Instagram’s potential safety repercussions on teenagers and children at a Senate hearing on Wednesday, he made the surprising statement that Instagram was bringing back “a version of a chronological feed” as an option. Apparently, this feature has been in the works “for months.”
“We’re currently working on a version of a chronological feed that we hope to launch next year,” Mosseri is reported to have said at the hearing, according to Engadget. Instagram plans to roll out this option in the first quarter of 2022.
Mosseri didn’t disclose further details about the feature, though given the context of the hearing, it’s likely to join a new set of teen safety and parental controls that Instagram announced just moments before the platform’s chief was set to testify in front of Congress. These tools, too, will be ready in early 2022—specifically, in March.
Before the wave of controversy depicting Facebook as an indifferent figure to the community it is meant to serve—with insiders condemning it for choosing profits over members’ interests, privacy, and wellbeing—Mosseri notably dismissed the concept of a “single stream of photos in chronological order” as a successful formula for Instagram feeds today. “As more people joined and more was shared, it became impossible for most people to see everything, let alone all the posts they cared about,” he reasoned back in June.
“By 2016, people were missing 70% of all their posts in Feed, including almost half of posts from their close connections. So we developed and introduced a Feed that ranked posts based on what you care about most,” he said then.
[via PetaPixel and Engadget, cover photo 78274305 © Rvlsoft | Dreamstime.com]
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