Australia’s proposal to require social-media platforms to let users opt out of algorithmic recommendations is drawing attention to an alternative that already exists inside Instagram: a chronological feed limited to accounts a user follows. The government introduced the reforms under the phrase “my feed, my way,” presenting greater feed control as a response to concerns about harmful and divisive recommendations.
Instagram’s version is available by selecting the Instagram logo at the top of the home screen and choosing the following feed. Instead of continually inserting recommended material, the view orders posts from followed accounts by time. It resembles the model used by early social networks, when a feed was principally an index of updates from chosen contacts.
A Guardian Australia writer tested that setting for 24 hours and also reduced her following list to people she had met. The result was a much smaller stream: after about ten minutes, Instagram reported that there were no more posts from followed accounts from the previous 30 days. Repeatedly refreshing produced none of the endless supply associated with recommendation-driven feeds.
The experiment was personal rather than scientific, but it demonstrates a practical difference between the two designs. A chronological feed can give a user more direct control over who appears, yet it may also reveal how much contemporary engagement depends on content selected from beyond that network. The reduced feed in the test felt calmer and created time for other activities, while also feeling less lively and less personal than the writer remembered from Instagram’s earlier years.
Algorithmic ranking is not simply a choice between useful and harmful material. Personalized systems can surface niche interests, entertainment and information that users would struggle to find manually. The same capacity can amplify content designed to provoke attention or guide people toward increasingly extreme material. Australia’s proposal targets control over that selection mechanism rather than banning personalized feeds outright.
The Instagram setting also shows that an opt-out does not necessarily require a new technical model. Platforms can maintain recommendation products while making a following-only view accessible. The policy question is whether such controls should be prominent, durable and consistently available rather than hidden behind a logo or menu.
For users, choosing the chronological option may change both the content they see and the amount of it. The Guardian test suggests that removing recommendations can quickly expose the limited posting activity of a selected social circle. Australia’s plan would give more people the opportunity to make that trade-off consciously instead of accepting algorithmic ranking as the unavoidable default.
