Instagram to bring back its chronological feed in 2022

Virgin Radio

9 Dec 2021, 15:01

It had the world up in arms when it changed, but six years later Instagram will be bringing back a version of its chronological feed.

Plans to change the feed were outlined to US lawmakers at a Senate hearing about the site and teen safety on Wednesday (8 December).

Speaking on behalf of the company, executive Adam Mosseri said: "We're currently working on a version of a chronological feed that we hope to launch next year.”

He also confirmed the company had been working on the new feature “for months”.

In a later tweet, however, Instagram clarified it would not be switching everyone to a chronological feed but would be “creating new options” and “providing people with more choices”.

Presumably, people will be able to choose how posts show up on their personal feeds.

The site used to display posts chronologically, but in June 2016, it swapped to a feed that displayed posts based on relevancy.

Mosseri and Instagram claimed that a chronological feed had made it impossible for people to see the posts they most cared about.

Writing for a blog, Mosseri claimed that in 2016 people were missing 70% of posts in their feed, hence why they made the changes.

That said, the switch caused quite the controversy, and the news is already receiving a positive response.

Replying to Instagram’s tweet announcing the changes, one user wrote: “1 of 3 posts is sponsored; 1 of 4 is from the #s being followed. Only 50% are from followed accounts. I don't see how chronological feed can possibly show fewer followed posts than the algorithms do so I am excited about options.”

Another said: “This! That’s all I’ve been wanting since they changed it is for them to change it back to chronological.”

One person even wrote they had stopped using Instagram altogether since they switched it five years ago.

Details about how its new ‘version’ of a chronological feed will work or how it will prevent users from missing engaging or important posts are yet to be shared by Instagram.

What we do know is the site, along with other platforms like Facebook and Twitter, have been under pressure from lawmakers to regulate their algorithms for user safety.