Instagram chief warns algorithm-free feeds would overwhelm users with brand content

Instagram's chief executive, Adam Mosseri, has pushed back against a proposal from Australia's government to let users opt out of algorithmic feeds, arguing that such a move would degrade the platform experience and drive people away. The Australian government announced plans this week to require social media companies to give users a choice: stick with algorithm-curated content or switch to a reverse-chronological feed showing only posts from accounts they follow. The measure is part of a broader effort to address online harms on social platforms.

Mosseri made his case during a briefing with journalists on Thursday, when Instagram launched its Algo Confessions series in Australia—the first rollout of the program outside the United States. The series features celebrities and influencers explaining how Instagram's ranking systems work and how users can exert some control through their settings. While Mosseri did not directly address the government's proposal, his comments amounted to a clear warning about what would happen if users were given the choice to abandon algorithmic ranking.

The core of his argument rested on a simple economic logic: in a reverse-chronological feed, the incentive structure flips. Creators, brands, and companies post far more frequently than friends do, so they would naturally dominate the feed. Users would find themselves buried under a deluge of commercial content, with posts from people they actually know pushed down the list. The result, Mosseri said, would be that people become frustrated and use the platform less. Engagement drops, the overall audience shrinks, and everyone—creators, brands, and users—ends up worse off. He described this as a tension between what individuals might want in isolation and what actually happens when that choice scales across an entire community.

Mosseri acknowledged that Instagram's ranking system is far from perfect. He said the algorithm "feels like a black box" and that the company tends to over-optimize for metrics it can easily measure while undervaluing things harder to quantify. He also noted that only a "very vocal minority" actually wants to return to reverse-chronological feeds. To address concerns about opacity, Mosseri said Instagram is working to give users more granular control—allowing them to opt out of recommendations in specific topics. Looking further ahead, he suggested that Meta's AI models might eventually let users have a conversation with the app to understand why they are seeing particular content.

When asked about addiction, Mosseri rejected the characterization, distinguishing between the colloquial use of the word—"I'm addicted to this show"—and the clinical definition, which involves withdrawal symptoms. Social media, he argued, does not produce withdrawal in that sense. The claim is not new; Mosseri has made it before. However, research has documented that frequent algorithmic engagement can alter dopamine pathways in ways that foster dependency analogous to substance addiction, and that users often develop an impulse to use platforms without full awareness of why they do so.

The Australian government's proposal represents one of the most direct regulatory challenges to algorithmic curation that Meta has faced. By giving users a genuine choice, the policy could force the company to operate two separate feed systems and potentially lose engagement if a significant portion of users opt for the chronological alternative. Mosseri's preemptive argument—that users would regret the choice—is a bet that when faced with the reality of an algorithm-free feed, most people would stick with ranking. Whether that prediction holds depends on what users actually experience if the law passes.