New Delhi: Instagram head Adam Mosseri said on Wednesday that the company is working on a version of its feed that would show users' posts in chronological order. Mosseri said this during a meeting before a Senate subcommittee, according to media reports. Instagram's current algorithm sorts posts based on user preferences.
This feature of sorting users' feed algorithmically was introduced in 2016, and then updated in 2017 to include recommended posts. Most users who prefer to have their posts and their friends' posts surface in a timely manner disliked this algorithm. Based on users' activity, Instagram creates a personalised feed using Artificial Intelligence (AI). However, this has remained unpopular among the company's large number of users.
Senators at the Senate subcommittee grilled Mosseri about child safety issues on the app, believed to have been prompted partly by revelations from former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen. The internal documents provided by Haugen to The Wall Street Journal suggested that Facebook, now Meta, was aware of the fact that its app may be "toxic" for teenagers.
"Have some empathy. Take some responsibility," Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) was quoted as saying to Mosseri, by The Verge.
Mosseri proposed the establishment of an "industry body" that would determine best practices about the handling of children's data and parental controls to ensure the safety of children online. Parents, regulators, and civil society would send inputs to the "industry body", that would help it create universal standards and protections. By following those standards, platforms would need to earn the protections of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, Mosseri said.
However, the Senators were skeptical that such an "industry body" could be effective. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who has called for online child safety measures to address concerns about Instagram, said that the time for self-policing is over.
Mosseri said Tuesday that more parental controls over their teenagers' use of Instagram will be released next year.
Blumenthal told Mosseri before ending Wednesday's hearing that what the latter had suggested so far was underwhelming, referring to Take a Break and other updates, and that those updates are not going to save kids from the addictive effects of Mosseri's platform, as per reports.