Old feature returns to Instagram

At the dawn of Instagram, posts were published in chronological order in the news feed, a method that Meta, which owns both Instagram and Facebook, is now looking to bring back. 

While it is still a mystery what guidelines the company follows to influence its newsfeed operations, the Instagram-leader Adam Mosseri managed to answer some common questions about the site's algorithms last June. The much-criticised method may now be put on the back burner, Retrieved from an old solution that displays news feed entries in chronological order.

This is not a coincidence, of course: in recent years, several users have said they would like to get back the ability to let the timeline decide what is in front of them, rather than the algorithms. Instagram seems to have listened to the feedback from users, so much so that Adam Mosseri has announced that they are already testing the chronological order, although there is no information yet on when exactly it will arrive, only that users will get the old-new feature in the first half of the year.

Testing Feed Changes 👀

We're starting to test the ability to switch between three different views on your home screen (two of which would give you the option to see posts in chronological order):
– Home
– Favorites
– Following

We hope to launch these soon. More to come. ✌🏼 pic.twitter.com/9zvB85aPSp

- Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) January 5, 2022

It is worth noting that the chronological order will return to the site as an optional feature, so users will be able to decide for themselves which option they prefer.

In addition to Instagram, Meta is also planning changes to Facebook's news feed, with the aim of giving users a greater say in the life of the site. The new enhancements would allow users to change their preferences, increasing or decreasing the amount of content they see from specific friends, family, groups and pages.