Mosseri answers Australia's A$109.2m feed proposal with an argument about reach
Australia's My Feed, My Way proposal would make every platform offer a following-only feed or face fines of up to A$109.2 million. Instagram already has one, and its chief used an Australian press briefing to argue that most users do not want it.
The Product Desk
What happened
- Instagram has offered a following-only feed for some time, and the company does not advertise the switch well.
- Meta's $23 billion settlement with 29 states, announced last month, covered claims that it endangered minors through addictive design features, which Meta denies.
- The briefing launched the Australian edition of Algo Talks, where Meta describes an Instagram ranking system driven primarily by an LLM and a Your Algorithm feedback button in Explore and Reels.
Why it matters
- What it limits constraint Because the toggle already ships, compliance turns on placement and defaults, and the proposal as reported sets no standard for how findable the control has to be.
- What doesn't add up contradiction Meta's case against the mandate is that people will use the app less; Gizmodo reads reduced use as the point of the regulatory push, so both sides are arguing from the same predicted outcome.
- Who's exposed exposure The harm Mosseri names lands on accounts that live on distribution, since shrinking reach is the consequence he describes.
- What it sets up precedent Having accepted a chronological option for American teens in the settlement, Meta is now arguing against extending the same control to every adult in one country.
Next story · Product · Sep 11
California requires a separate unranked feed for every user under 16Confirmed4 publishers
Instagram already ships the switch Australia wants to require. A user can turn on a feed that shows only posts from the accounts they follow [6]. The company does not advertise that switch well [7].
Adam Mosseri's objection at the briefing was about supply. He said friends post less than influencers or brands [4]. "If you go to a chronological feed, it ends up getting overwhelmed with content from companies, brands, and publishers," Mosseri told reporters, per ABC [3]. Only a "very vocal minority" prefer chronological feeds, he said [15].
The rest of his case is about distribution. "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," Mosseri said, according to The Guardian [5]. The people getting mad in that sentence are the accounts whose reach fell.
Gizmodo's account of the briefing carries no figure for how many Instagram users have ever turned the following-only feed on, and none for what happened to their use of the app afterwards [16]. Meta holds both numbers. Without them, a claim about a vocal minority cannot be checked against what people did after they switched.
The enforcement question is what counts as offering the option. As reported, the proposal requires platforms to give every user the option to see only posts from the people they follow, with penalties up to A$109.2 million [2]. The account does not say whether the proposal sets any standard for how findable that control has to be [18].
Meta has already accepted an adjacent obligation. Its $23 billion settlement with 29 states, announced last month, covered claims that it endangered minors through addictive design features [10]. Meta denies the claim and agreed to preventive actions, including giving American teens the option to switch out of the algorithmic feed to a chronological one [11].
For any team sitting on a similar toggle, the figures to have are the share of users who ever turned it on and the share still using it a week later. A team that can produce both is describing what users do. Mosseri said Instagram is not knowingly hiding the toggle, but that "there's definitely room to improve the discoverability of that" [8].
What to watch
- Whether the final Australian rule specifies where the non-algorithmic control must sit in the interface, and not only that it exists.
- Whether Meta publishes adoption or retention figures for the following-only feed at a future Algo Talks session.
- Whether Meta offers Mosseri's user-feedback initiative as its remedy in submissions on the Australian proposal.
Clarity's read
What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption25
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives75
- Confidence55
Perspective Coverage
3 publishers- Builder
- Builder 25%
- Operator
- Operator 53%
- Investor
- Investor 22%
Claim ledger
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
- [1]
The Australian government has proposed giving social media users the option to switch to a non-algorithm-driven feed, in a proposal called My Feed, My Way.
- [2]
Under the proposal, social media platforms will be required to give every user the option to see only posts from the people they follow, rather than what the algorithm curates, or face up to 109.2 million Australian dollars in fines.
- [3]
"If you go to a chronological feed, it ends up getting overwhelmed with content from companies, brands, and publishers," Mosseri told reporters, per ABC.
- [4]
Mosseri claims that a chronological feed fills with commercial content because friends post less than influencers or brands.
- [5]
"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," Mosseri said, according to The Guardian.
- [6]
Instagram already has an option to switch to a feed where users see only posts from accounts they follow.
- [7]
Critics claim the switch to the following-only feed is not well-advertised by the company.
- [8]
Mosseri told Australian media that Instagram is not knowingly hiding the toggle, but "there's definitely room to improve the discoverability of that."
- [9]
Mosseri's remarks came at a press briefing in Australia unveiling the Australian version of Algo Talks, a series meant to illuminate the black box of algorithm-driven ranking and help users understand how they can control the content they see.
- [10]
Meta's $23 billion court settlement with 29 states, announced last month, involved suits alleging it endangered minors on its platforms, including via addictive design features that exacerbated mental health problems.
- [11]
Meta denies the claim in the 29-state case but agreed to a series of preventive actions, including giving American teens the option to switch out of the algorithmic feed to a chronological one.
- [12]
Instagram's algorithm is driven primarily by an LLM, and users can tell the system their likes and dislikes through the Your Algorithm button on the Explore or Reels section of the app.
- [13]
Gizmodo wrote that decreasing user engagement already seems to be the end goal with the regulatory push.
- [14]
Mosseri is also leading an initiative to incorporate more user feedback into the Instagram algorithm.
- [15]
Mosseri claims that only a "very vocal minority" prefer chronological feeds over algorithmically curated ones.
- [16]
Gizmodo's report of the briefing contains no figure for how many Instagram users have used the existing following-only feed and no figure for their app usage after switching.
- [17]
The 29-state settlement obligation covers American teens, while the Australian proposal as described covers every user of a platform.
- [18]
The report describes the Australian requirement as giving every user the option, and states no standard for the prominence or placement of that control.
Sources
3 independent publishers whose own reporting we read for this story.
- 9to5google.comInstagram chief thinks a chronological feed is ‘much worse’ and says the quiet part out loud
1 article · September 11, 2026
- gizmodo.comInstagram Exec Thinks People Don’t Actually Want A Chronological Feed
1 article · September 11, 2026
- thenextweb.comInstagram’s head says engagement falls by half without the algorithm
1 article · September 10, 2026
Topics and entities
Topics
- Social Media Regulation
- Australian online safety policy
- Algorithmic Feeds