Instagram Adds Your Algorithm Feature to Main Feed

Instagram is adding the Your Algorithm feature to the main feed, allowing users to see the topics the platform believes they are interested in and to change those topics. The Verge reported that the feature currently surfaces only topics. Instagram said it is working on support for requests about people, moods or vibes, content types, and additional categories.

Instagram has already rolled out the Your Algorithm feature for the Reels feed and the Explore page. Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, said the update marks the beginning of a larger effort. “This is the start of something bigger than a feature,” he stated.

Mosseri added that giving users more control aligns with the company’s interests. “It is in our best interest as a business to empower people to shape Instagram into something that works for them, and that people should be able to have a meaningful amount of agency over the products they spend so much time in,” he said.

He noted that the company plans to apply the same principle to future products.

“We intend to build much of what comes next on that principle,” Mosseri stated. Mosseri also described the trade-offs of current recommendation systems. “Algorithmic recommendations are in many ways a genuine technical achievement but also have a cost in what they did to people’s agency,” he said.

He explained that the system learns from taps, watches, and shares, yet offers limited direct input. “The system learns from what you tap, watch, and share, but you don’t really get to tell it what you want,” Mosseri said. Mosseri said advances in large language models now allow the platform to label clusters of content in plain language, giving users a clearer view of what the algorithm infers and a way to adjust it.