Australia’s latest proposed social media legislation takes aim at recommendation algorithms. If passed, it will give users the freedom to choose whether they want to continue using platforms’ standard recommendation-driven/discover feeds, or switch to a reverse-chronological feed that will only show them posts from people they follow.
Doesn’t sound too shabby, right?
Well, there’s one important thing Australian legislators failed to consider: Instagram would be very, very sad if its users had a choice.
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Following news of Australia’s plans, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri told journalists that only a “very vocal minority” of people want social media to go back to reverse-chronological feeds.
He said if users switched to that kind of feed, they would be “overwhelmed” with content from brands, because “it turns out your friends post a lot less than creators, who post a lot less than brands and companies.”
Now, Mosseri didn’t directly say his comments were a response to Australia’s proposed legislation, but if he were to discuss that legislation, he’d need to remember that it doesn’t just stipulate a reverse-chronological feed. It stipulates a reverse-chronological feed where users only see posts from people/accounts they follow–so users who don’t want to see brand content simply do not have to follow brand accounts.
Of course, he could also be referring to ads interwoven between posts, which is another matter.
Mosseri went on to say that non-recommendation feeds cause people to “become a bit less interested in the experience and they use it a lot less, which then means there’s less reach to go around and people start to get more and more mad about the fact that their reach is going down because the overall pie gets smaller.”
And less engagement and less reach means less revenue for Meta-owned Instagram. Can’t have that.
Mosseri said he thinks this all boils down to “interesting tension between what an individual might want and what happens when you actually explode that to the entire community.”
To mollify those pesky individuals, Instagram has added basic features like letting users opt out of seeing specific topics in their recommended. But for future algorithm improvements, Instagram is–like several other platforms–planning to shunt responsibility off on users to curate their feeds by talking to a LLM chatbot, The Guardian reports.
Are Mosseri’s comments likely to sway Australian lawmakers? No.
“This is sensible, pragmatic, practical reform,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said about the proposed algorithm legislation. “It gives users choice and it will hold the big tech companies responsible for inaction if they don’t follow our laws.”
A similar law already exists in the European Union: In 2024, it implemented the Digital Services Act, which also requires platforms to let users switch to a non-recommended feed. As Reuters notes, the Act’s rollout was notoriously difficult, and regulators complained that platforms weren’t making it easy enough for users to opt out.
We’re guessing things won’t be too different if Australia brings this law into being. For big tech-owned platforms, recommendations are the lifeblood pumping more and more content into users’ eyeballs. Recommendation feeds drive traffic, engagement, time, shareholder value.
The effects these feeds might have on users? Not platforms’ problem.
