Instagram's new chronological feed is a letdown
And it doesn't seem like Instagram wants you to use it.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, from Kate Lindsay and Nick Catucci.🧩
Justice for the little moments! —Kate
We all have different reasons for complaining about Instagram—the optional social media app we could stop using at any time—but mine are pretty well-documented. Mostly, I found that over the years, Instagram was responsible for my assigning implicit or explicit value to the things I did in life based on how many people liked it, or what a faceless algorithm thought people would like. So last week, when Instagram announced it was reintroducing the chronological feed, it seemed like all my complaining into the Substack void was not in vain.
But ... Instagram did not really bring back the chronological feed. Instead, you can now click a new dropdown menu next to the word “Instagram” to find the “following” button, which takes you to an entirely separate feed that presents content in chronological order. It’s basically the “other” folder of feeds. Instagram does not allow you to just organize your main feed chronologically, like Twitter does, nor does it remember that you selected “following” and take you there automatically next time you open the app. Instead, you have to remember to choose it each time. The app clearly prefers to deliver your content algorithmically.
Still, visiting the following feed section felt, for me, like a reunion of sorts. I was able to see content from accounts that had been buried by the algorithm over the years—not just creators I wasn’t as engaged with or brand accounts with whom I had never interacted, but people. People I knew from college, high school, and elementary school with whom I had reconnected digitally, but whose regular, everyday content couldn’t compete with professional content, and therefore siphoned off my feed.
To see posts from those people made me realize how betrayed I had been by my social media over the past ten years. I gave Instagram the power to slowly decide what connections were worth keeping—which people’s lives were splashy and algorithmically pleasing enough to still surface for me.
Will the "following" feed help other users realize what has been lost, and eventually force Instagram to change its main feed? Unlikely, since it's so tedious to find and open it. Some small businesses—so often the ones to bear the brunt of algorithmic changes—are imploring their followers to use the following feed so they’ll have a fighting chance of being seen again. But my guess is a lot of people will remember to use the following tab a few times before defaulting again to the algorithmic feed. I’m guessing that’s Instagram’s hope, too.
But even this glimpse of a chronological feed gave me hope that a better social media world is possible. How many moments had I gone to document and then stopped, thinking no one would care because the picture wouldn’t contain any of the ingredients required to stand out in other people's feeds? What would you celebrate about your life if you knew it wasn’t going to be sorted by an algorithm? Scrolling the following tab, I saw people’s little moments and remembered Instagram’s early reputation for food pictures that no one cared about. But after years of announcement photos and comparison-inducing posing and infographics and sponsored posts, I’d love to just see your eggs and toast.