Facebook and Instagram will show more posts from accounts you don’t follow

• Facebook and Instagram will show even more posts from accounts you don’t follow.
• Mark Zuckerberg said the company will more than double content from recommended accounts.
• The boost is a radical departure from Facebook and Instagram’s historical focus on displaying posts from friends.

In recent days, thousands of influencers, from Kylie Jenner to Mexican actresses, have criticized the new Instagram format. So if, like them, you already have strong feelings about your Instagram feed showing more and more posts from accounts that you don’t follow, just wait until next year.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will more than double the amount of content from recommended accounts that people will see while using Instagram and Facebook by the end of 2023, according to El Universal.

Facebook and Instagram will show more posts from accounts you don’t follow

Zuckerberg said such recommendations currently make up about 15 percent of content on Facebook and the percentage is already higher on Instagram. The push, which Zuckerberg calls the «Discovery Engine» construct, is a radical departure from Facebook and Instagram’s historical focus on displaying posts from a user’s social graph, or friends list.

The change is intended to compete with TikTok’s heavy use of AI to post videos regardless of where they come from. That approach quickly made TikTok one of the most used apps in the world and spawned an entirely new creator economy. Filed As: Instagram new format

Meta will use AI to recommend all the content that people share

During Meta’s second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, Zuckerberg explained that «By finding additional content that people find interesting, that increases engagement and the quality of our feeds.»

He said that Meta will use AI to recommend all the content that people share publicly on their service, such as links or photos. «In that sense, I think what we’re doing is going to be pretty unique,» he said, alluding to TikTok’s singular focus on short videos. «I don’t think people want to be restricted to one format.» Filed As: Instagram new format

It is not Facebook’s first drastic change

Facebook’s last big change in how it recommends content came in 2018, when Zuckerberg announced a strategy focused on encouraging «meaningful social interactions» (MSI) between friends in News Feed. When it was introduced, Zuckerberg predicted that it would lead to a decrease in time spent on the social network but would make users feel better.

«Research shows that when we use social media to connect with the people we care about, it can be good for our well-being,» he said at the time. “On the other hand, passively reading articles or watching videos, even if they are entertaining or informative, may not be as good.” Filed As: Instagram new format

Most users interact through private messages

Now that Meta’s business is slowing down and Facebook’s user base is aging, Zuckerberg seems to be throwing out the last four years of how the feed was designed. This week, he said that people were stopping sharing in feeds altogether and instead communicating through private messages.

«A social trend we’re seeing is that instead of people just engaging in comments on feeds, most people find interesting content in their feeds and then message that content to their friends and engage there.»