I think the major issue is, people still have the option of those older forms of feeds, people just don't like them.

New social media competitors (ie Tiktok) have won users by having even more powerful algorithms rather than other options.

Of course, but the users can’t be trusted to stay away from something designed to addict them. Only real solution is regulation, although the how is still a big question mark.

I would ask, where is the line drawn between 'enjoyment and addiction.'

Is it the harm provided? Then what do we count as harm, and where is the line.

IE, There's no one stopping me from eating unhealthy, IE sugary foods, which are heavily addictive. I ride a motorbike, and I'd consider myself addicted to that, and it's got a high chance of harm, but we don't ban those. Ditto with gaming, social media, hobby XYZ.

I personally think the freedom to choose your vice is reasonable.

Maybe this freedom sounds reasonable at first. Pew Research says 36% of 13–17 year olds are on social media almost constantly [0]. This is not a problem that existed 20 years ago. The ease of access to highly addictive products is rotting the soul of society.

0: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/12/09/teens-social...

How? The 2 feeds on my IG account: "posts" and "reels" show content of people that I do not follow.

Instagram definitely doesn't have the option but youtube for instance does, there's a subscription tab that's collecting dust in most people's accounts.

NewPipe even has the subscription feed pretty centered

if you click on the ig logo you can switch to a feed that only shows accounts you follow

oo thanks for the tip. sadly, this view still shows posts from advertisers that I don't follow. but that is the nature of the beast I guess.

Chronological feeds tend to be gameable by growth hacking. Still better than a lot of things.

One of the tricky things for me is feed aggregation for balancing subscriptions between people who post a lot and people who don't.

It also might be interesting if video recommendations were curated feeds by the creator.

We have that in the EU, they mandated it. It finally made instagram use-able for me again. Did instagram geo-gate that feature? Wouldn't surprise me, but still.

I build a safari extension to do just this (block all content that isn't explicitly subscribed to by the user) and it's a remarkably better experience. This is my hot take that most people seem to disagree with: the vast majority of culture wars we are having today would not exist without content recommendation algorithms.