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Google PlayInstagram head Adam Mosseri revealed in a Senate subcommittee hearing Wednesday that the platform will be bringing back “a version” of the chronological feed next year.
Mosseri said the feature has been in the works “for months,” and the company is “targeting the first quarter of next year” for its launch. Instagram nixed the chronological feed in 2016, in favor of a layout that was determined by an algorithm. The change has been widely scrutinized among users, but Mosseri defended the decision, claiming in a recent blog post that “people were missing 70 percent of all their posts in Feed, including almost half of posts from their close connections.”
Mosseri said a combination of algorithms, classifiers, and processes went into personalizing someone’s feed, but the platform’s younger audience were still skeptical about how some posts were given priority over others.
The announcement comes one day after Mosseri introduced new parental controls, which will go into effect in March, that will let them see and limit the amount of time their child spends on the app.
In response to the Senate subcommittee’s focus on the platform’s effect on its teenage users, Mosseri suggested implementing an “industry body” that would determine the best practices for handling parental controls and children’s data, according to The Verge. Lawmakers weren’t quite receptive to the idea.
Instagram launched its “Take a Break” opt-in feature on Tuesday that will prompt people to temporarily suspend use after someone spends an extended period of time on the app.
