Instagram warns Australia against algorithm opt-out

Adam Mosseri is warning Australians about an algorithm opt-out, as the Albanese government prepares rules that would require platforms to offer a choice between recommended feeds and reverse chronological timelines. According to The Guardian, Instagram’s chief executive argues that removing ranking would not produce a calmer, more user-controlled experience, but instead a feed dominated by brands and high-frequency posters.

Mosseri’s argument hinges on an unglamorous detail of social media economics: brands and companies can afford to post constantly, while friends post less, and creators sit somewhere in between. In a reverse chronological feed, the most prolific publisher wins the scarce slot at the top of the screen, and the most prolific publishers are often those with marketing budgets and teams. Instagram, by contrast, uses multiple algorithms to rank different surfaces—friends’ stories, feed posts, and message suggestions—turning what looks like a simple timeline into a managed allocation system where the platform decides which content gets seen.

Australia’s proposed prompt would shift some of that allocation power back to users, at least on paper, but it also forces platforms to reveal what they have been reluctant to say plainly: the default feed is not a neutral window onto what people you follow are doing. It is a curated product that trades user attention for advertising revenue, and ranking is the mechanism that keeps casual users from being buried under promotional output. Mosseri told journalists that only a “very vocal minority” wants the old chronological model, and he predicted that time spent on Instagram would fall if users switched off recommendations—an outcome that would reduce total reach and likely trigger complaints from the same users who opted out.

Instagram’s response has been to offer explanation rather than surrender. The company has launched an “Algo Confessions” series in Australia—its first outside the US—using celebrities and influencers to describe how the feed is assembled. Mosseri also acknowledged that the ranking systems can feel like a “black box” and said Instagram tends to over-optimise for measurable signals while undervaluing harder-to-measure qualities. He pointed to controls that let users opt out of certain recommendation topics, and floated a future where Meta’s AI models could let users ask the app why they are seeing a particular post.

The government’s proposal would turn that future into a compliance question: if users are offered a switch, the platform must live with what the unranked feed actually looks like, and advertisers will learn how much of their performance depends on Instagram’s curation rather than their content.

Instagram is telling Australians that an opt-out means more brands in the feed. The opt-out proposal is being sold as a choice about algorithms.