Instagram manager Adam Mosseri has been promising this since last year. The chronological news feed was going to make a big comeback on Instagram. But the new features launched this week by the platform do not quite correspond to what users expected.
Two viewing modes
These are two features that are made official, after being briefly presented in January. The first is Followingtranslated into French by Subscriptions. It allows you to display the publications of the people you follow in order. The second, Favorites, shows the latest contents of a selection of accounts. This can concern a maximum of 50 sources. They are then distinguished by a star-shaped icon in the Feed.
Most Subscriptions and Favorites are not settings that can be activated by default, so that you can follow your news feed according to these criteria when you open the application.
These are just two additional viewing modes accessed through a drop-down menu via the Instagram logo in the top left corner (see screenshot above).
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An insufficient alternative to algorithms
Auditioned by Congress in December 2021, Adam Mosseri had to react after the embarrassing revelations of whistleblower Frances Haugen. The harmful effects of Instagram on the mental health of adolescent girls had been pointed out in particular.
The operational opacity of the algorithms that prioritize content in the Feed was in question. It was therefore necessary to find alternatives to prove Instagram’s good will to improve things. Subscriptions and Favorites are supposed to provide an answer to this problem. But that may well not be enough.