Over the past six or so months, Instagram has been rapidly making changes to the platform, focusing more on video and recommended content. Due to recent backlash, however, Instagram plans to take a step back from its new vision.
Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, told reporter Casey Newton on Thursday that testing of the full-screen version of the feed, similar to TikTok, will be paused in the next week.
Instagram is also looking to lower the amount of recommended posts in the app as it tweaks its algorithm. Responding to complaints about the algorithm earlier this week, Mosseri admitted that if users are seeing content in their feeds that they’re not interested in, it means that Instagram is “doing a bad job ranking and needs to improve.”
Social media managers may be getting whiplash from all the recent changes. Just a couple days ago, Mark Zuckerberg announced in an earnings call that Meta was looking to double down on recommended content. Zuckerberg said that a little more than 15% of an Instagram user’s feed is now recommended content, and that those numbers would more than double by the end of the next year.
While Instagram has received mounting criticism this past week, with even the Kardashians joining the movement against algorithmic changes, Mosseri told Newton that the usage data itself is showing that the new feed design isn’t a hit among users.
Mosseri said Instagram is going to work on improving its ranking and recommendations before it moves ahead with any algorithm changes.
No word has been released as to whether Facebook, which has also been redesigned to show more recommended content, will hit pause on these developments as well.
