Instagram, Facebook To Show More Posts From People You Don’t Follow

The chief executive of Meta – the parent company that runs Instagram and Facebook as well as WhatsApp says Instagram and Facebook users will begin to see an increased number of posts in their feeds coming from accounts they don’t follow. The amount of content that comes from people, groups, or accounts that people have chosen not to watch, as recommended by artificial intelligence, will more than double by the end of 2023, according to Mark Zuckerberg.

He said the company was building a “discovery engine” intended to show people other types of content.

Zuckerberg announced a tough earnings call for Meta, which reported declining revenue for the first time in its history. It blamed problems on a weak economy, less money spent on advertisements, and competition from TikTok.

But Mr. Zuckerberg’s announcement comes amid a heated controversy over the direction of Instagram. In recent days, a viral movement has begun urging Instagram to stop attempting to be like TikTok — one of several new features with recommendations from other accounts that have been criticized by users.

At the moment, about 15 percent of the content in people’s Facebook feeds comes from recommendations, Zuckerberg said. On Instagram, the number is “a little higher”.

But the company is ramping up already controversial content aimed at increasing engagement and “the quality of our feed,” Zuckerberg said. This in turn should help with revenue because Meta makes more money when people use those parts of its app, he claimed.

Mr. Zuckerberg also said that such recommendations helped increase the time he spent with “Reels”, which aims to take on TikTok by borrowing many of its features. They started on Instagram but are now also visible on Facebook, and Zuckerberg said the time spent viewing them increased by 30 percent – ​​he said the increase was mainly due to those AI recommendations.

A move toward recommending content from accounts people haven’t followed or interacted with is a major change for Meta. In the past, the company has committed to promoting “meaningful social interaction” and connection between people in public rather than encouraging them to engage with strangers’ content.

Mr. Zuckerberg claimed during the earnings call that those two objectives were not in conflict, and he still sees Meta as “ultimately a social company focused on helping people connect”. He pointed to the fact that people would often send content that appeared in their feeds to their friends, and then engage in direct messages with those people.

The recommendations were just an attempt by Mr. Zuckerberg to respond to the weak results. He also suggested that he would ask employees to work more intensively with fewer resources and that the new Apple features would however create ways to personalize ads, making it easier for the company to track users across the Internet.