Instagram gives users more control over what they see

Instagram is giving users more options to control what they see on their feed after weeks of backlash over the app’s changing algorithm over suggested posts.

The Meta-owned app announced that it was testing two new features that users could use to control their explore pages. The first feature is the ability to mark several posts on the explore page and mark them with the ‘Not Interested’ option. The company is also testing the ability for users to filter out posts that contain certain words, phrases or emojis in the caption or hashtag. “It’s important to us that people feel good about the time they spend on Instagram, so we’ll continue to work on ways to give people more control over what they see,” Meta said in a blog post. While users were able to choose the ‘Not Interested’ before, they had to mark each post one at a time. The ability to filter out posts based on phrases, emojis and words from their explore pages will also allow users to completely cut off content that they don’t like from showing up. The company had been facing backlash over the increase in suggested posts that showed up in users’ feeds, a change that the company was forced to roll back. Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, had stated in response that the company would dial down the number of suggested posts in feeds while Instagram worked at getting better at showing people the posts that they were interested in. In its blog, Meta also highlighted other tools that users have to control what they see in their explore pages and feeds. These tools include using the ‘Following’ and ‘Favourites’ options to control what shows up in their feed, using the ‘Not Interested’ option on posts, snoozing suggested posts and tuning sensitive content filters.