Instagram announced in June 2026 that it is rolling out algorithm customization controls to its main feed, giving users the ability to see and edit the topics the platform thinks they are interested in. The feature, called Your Algorithm, was previously available for Reels and the Explore page and is now being extended across all major parts of the app.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri made the announcement, describing it as the beginning of a broader shift in how the platform operates. “This is the start of something bigger than a feature,” Mosseri said. “I believe it’s in our best interest as a business to empower people to shape Instagram into something that works for them.” The current rollout covers topic-based preferences, with support for people, moods, content types, and other categories described as in development.
Mosseri acknowledged that algorithmic recommendation systems, while technically sophisticated, had come at a cost to user agency. “The system learns from what you tap, watch, and share, but you don’t really get to tell it what you want,” he said, adding that this dynamic may contribute to the unease many people feel about social media — “not the content itself, but the sense that the experience is happening to them rather than being shaped by them.”
The shift was made possible, Mosseri explained, by large language models, which can analyze clusters of content and describe them in plain language. This gives Instagram a way to surface what the system believes a user wants and a mechanism for users to correct or redirect those assumptions — something he said was not feasible with older ranking technologies.
For users, the change could mean more direct control over what appears in their feeds, moving away from a purely passive, behavior-inferred experience toward one with explicit input options.
Source: The Verge