Instagram's chief executive, Adam Mosseri, has warned that users will have a worse experience in an algorithm-free world, seeing more brand-related content and spending less time on the app. This comes as the Australian government plans to let users opt out of algorithms, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announcing on Tuesday that social media platforms will be required to prompt users to choose between an algorithm-recommended feed or a reverse chronological feed of the pages they follow. Labor also plans a range of measures to address online harm on the sites.

In a briefing with journalists on Thursday to launch the company's Algo Confessions series in Australia - the first such launch outside the US - Mosseri did not directly comment on the Albanese government proposal but noted Instagram operates a range of algorithms. These include ranking which friends' stories you see more often, which users come up first in message suggestions based on interactions, and the algorithm determining feed content. The Algo Confessions series features celebrities and influencers explaining how Instagram decides what appears in your feed, and how users can exert some control by adding or removing tags in their settings.

Mosseri said only a "very vocal minority" wants social media to return to reverse chronological feeds, arguing that would just incentivise people to post more. "What ends up happening is the best way to get more reach is just to post more often and those who can afford to post the most often do and then therefore get the most reach," he said. "And it turns out your friends post a lot less than creators, who post a lot less than brands and companies." He said people would be "overwhelmed" with content from brands, and creators and friends would be drowned out. "What happens is people become a bit less interested in the experience and they use it a lot less, which then means that there's less reach to go around and people start to get more and more mad about the fact that their reach is going down because the overall pie gets smaller." He added that engagement and user satisfaction go down. "It's this interesting tension between what an individual might want and what happens when you actually explode that to the entire community," he said. "That's not to say that ranking is perfect, it's not, we make mistakes - one of the things that frustrates me about ranking is that we end up over-optimising for things that we can measure and undervaluing things that are more difficult to measure."

Mosseri acknowledged that Instagram's ranking algorithm "feels like a black box" but said the company is trying to give users more control by allowing them to opt out of certain topics in their recommendations. He suggested that in the future, Meta's AI models could eventually let users talk to the app to understand why they are seeing certain types of content.

On the question of addiction, Mosseri said he does not believe the app meets the clinical definition of "addictive". "I don't believe Instagram is addictive - I know that is controversial to say - I do think we often in English anyway conflate the way we colloquially use the word addicted … like 'I'm addicted to this show and I'm binge watching it, which is not good for me'." He said clinically defined addictions have withdrawal symptoms, while social media does not have that effect, and "those things are different". Mosseri has made this claim before. Research has found some users can have an impulse to use a platform without being fully aware of it, and evidence shows frequent engagement with algorithms "alters dopamine pathways" that fosters dependency that is "analogous to substance addiction". In the landmark US court case centred on the addictive nature of Meta's products, the company's lawyer last month conceded to the court that it was "no dispute" people can struggle with social media, but the company has tools to address that. Meta later settled the case for US$18bn while denying any wrongdoing.