Instagram has announced it recently reached three billion users. With this milestone, the social media platform is testing new ways to personalise user experience. The app is testing a new feature that will allow its users to customize the content that gets shown on their reels. The feature will allow users to remove content that is currently being recommended to them by category, and add categories they want to see more of.
In an attempt to shape the platform into something its users love, Instagram vowed to give users more control over their experience and tune their own algorithm in a digital world where recommendations continue to grow and where followings don’t matter as much as they used to.
Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri expressed that while the platform continues to evolve, they will continue to prioritize creativity in the changes and improvements they make. He revealed that most of Instagram’s recent growth has been driven by Recommendations, Reels and DMs and these are the features that will be used to better organize the app in new updates.
The new algorithm feature was inspired by a meme trend on the platform back in 2024 called, “dear algorithm” where users asked the algorithm to show them more of certain things and less of others. The changes will first show in the reels tab and eventually on the explore page and in feed.
“I found it a really meaningful way to shape the experience and to correct Instagram when it’s getting things wrong. And add things that I love that Instagram didn’t figure out that I was interested in. Hopefully, it’s a meaningful way where you can control the experience,” said Mosseri in a new update posted on the platform.
