How the chronological feed is making a comeback

Users mostly hate them — but regulators are increasingly requiring them. Why?

Aug 22, 2023

“an alarm clock showing the facebook logo” / DALL-E

Today, let’s talk about how an idea that we once took for granted on social networks is now under threat. Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok all grew on the strength of recommendation algorithms that learned to predict your interests better than even you could yourself. Thanks to a new European law, though, they and large platforms will have to let users opt out of those recommendations.

In the place of the old rankings, users will find the kind of feed the social web began with: one where the most recent posts are shown first. The chronological feed is making a comeback — to what benefit, though, is not at all clear.

Earlier this month, TikTok announced that it would introduce a version of its central For You page that shows users “popular videos from both the places where they live and around the world,” rather than one based on their in-app activity.

And today Meta, which already offers users the ability to switch to chronological feeds in Facebook and on Instagram, announced it would be extending that option to Reels and its ephemeral stories feature.

The reason, of course, is the European Union’s Digital Services Act. Along with the Digital Markets Act, the laws seek to prevent platforms from doing harm while also opening them up to more competition. Certain provisions of the laws go into effect next week, with the rest arriving over the coming months.

Similar laws have been considered — and considered, and considered — in the United States. But the European Commission actually got their bills over the finish line, and the effects will soon be felt globally.

There’s a lot to like in the new laws, which are grounded in the idea that platforms should be required to provide some minimum level of customer service; should have to disclose information about how ads are targeted; and should have to open themselves to independent outside research. (Here’s a good FAQ from the European Commission that goes over the requirements in more detail.)

Also admirable: the laws at least gesture at users’ rights to free expression, and don’t seek to interfere with platform content moderation at the level of the individual post. While acknowledging that some forms of online speech can create harm, the DSA requires platforms to undertake an annual risk assessment and lay out how they work to address problematic speech.

At the same time, these laws do raise the potential for overreach. Last month, I wrote about how some European politicians were salivating over the prospect of using the DSA to knock platforms offline altogether during (government-designated) times of crisis.

The instinct to unplug tech platforms and the requirement that they offer chronological feeds come from the same place: a fear that large networks of people, communicating instantaneously and at scale, will create social chaos. Might the world be better, these laws ask, if posts had more trouble going viral?

Ultimately, though, this is a nostalgic question, rooted in the vague feeling that the internet was better before ranking algorithms were invented. And while I could certainly list some ways in which that feels true — we had a much healthier journalism ecosystem, for starters — it also seems beside the point.

The reason is that users have repeatedly been given the option to return to chronological feeds over the years. Time and time again, we see that they avoid them.

Much of our understanding here comes from Meta, which has likely spent more time researching the question than anyone else. The company’s primary objective is to get people to spend time looking at its feeds and occasionally clicking ads. If chronological feeds were good at that, the company would use them.

But they’re not, and so Meta doesn’t.

Citing leaked documents, the Washington Post’s Will Oremus analyzed the then-Facebook’s findings in 2021. He writes:

In 2014, another internal report, titled “Feed ranking is good,” summarized the results of tests that found allowing users to turn off the algorithm led them to spend less time in their news feeds, post less often and interact less. Ultimately, they began logging into Facebook less often, imperiling the years-long growth in user engagement that has long powered the company’s lucrative advertising business. Without an algorithm deciding which posts to show at the top of users’ feeds, concluded the report’s author, whose name was redacted, “Facebook would probably be shrinking.”
In the 2014 test, which has not been previously reported, the company toyed with honoring the “most recent” setting for longer and shorter periods of time after a user selected it from the settings — that is, with leaving the ranking algorithm off for longer and shorter periods before reverting to it. The results were not encouraging, from Facebook’s standpoint. The longer Facebook left the user’s feed in chronological order, the less time they spent on it, the less they posted, and the less often they returned to Facebook.

A more recent study of the subject, conducted in 2020 and revealed in a paper published last month, had similar findings, Paresh Dave reported at Wired:

For three months in late 2020, nearly 7,200 US adults on Facebook and 8,800 on Instagram received a radically different experience than the services’ billions of other users. When they scrolled through their newsfeeds, Facebook and Instagram showed them the newest posts as determined by the clock, not those judged most relevant by an algorithm. The response was clear: Users served chronological feeds got bored quicker and were much more likely to decamp to rivals such as YouTube and TikTok.

Of course, individual people may still prefer a chronological feed. Before Instagram introduced one, users regularly clamored for one. And there are certain times when a more chronological feed makes sense for most users: following a sports game on one of Twitter’s replacements, for example.

Still, it feels like a somewhat curious thing for the government to mandate. We know that the vast majority of people prefer personalized feeds. And I’ve seen no evidence that forcing a return to chronological feeds would address any policy aim in particular.

In short, it feels like vibes-based regulation. And while I appreciate the EU’s eagerness to act, in general I think we should pursue more evidence-based approaches to reining in tech platforms.

All that said, I can think of at least one good reason to require these sorts of feeds: while a distinct minority, some people really do absolutely love them. Getting this option on Instagram took years of vocal complaints. And wherever a feed exists, there will always be some people who want to see the most recent posts first.

For the most part, I think platform regulation should be focused on reducing harms and promoting competition. But there is also something to be said for a government working to see that its citizens get good customer service.

Talk about this edition with us in Discord: This link will get you in for the next week.

A cool media thing

Hey, here’s something neat: some really talented reporters whose work I knew from their days at Vice’s Motherboard vertical have a new tech-focused site called 404. For years now I’ve been linking here to the fine work of Jason Koebler, Emanuel Maiberg, Samantha Cole, and Joseph Cox, and I’m thrilled to see them starting their own reader-supported publication. I just bought an annual subscription, and encourage you to consider doing the same.

This isn’t a paid ad, and I’ve never even met any of these writers — I just like to see talented people working to build a more sustainable media ecosystem for all of us. And I know we will benefit from their work.

Speaking of which, here’s their first investigation:

Hackers are exploiting access to sensitive personal data collected by credit bureaus and selling access to it via an automated Telegram bot for as little as $15. It sure would be nice if we had a national privacy law. (Joseph Cox / 404 Media)

Talk to us

Send us tips, comments, questions, and ranked posts: casey@platformer.news and zoe@platformer.news.

Sophie

Aug 23, 2023

Not convinced that people using social media less with a chronological feed indicates users don’t prefer it, as compared to the idea that the algorithm generates much more “exciting” content so people feel compelled to interact with it. But are those interactions negative or positive? The time users spend on those posts are good for the company’s bottom line, but are they good for those users? I feel like a common effect of non-chronological feeds is disguising when you’ve run out of content—its a never ending feed of things to feed into your brain because it keeps pulling stuff for you to see, instead of letting you catch up on a days worth of posts, then log off.

There is also the hypothesis that people who prefer chronological timelines have drifted away from services that don’t offer them or make them hard to use—as one of the six remaining tumblr users, its my one remaining social media platform precisely because it is chronological and I hate that other platforms aren’t.

1 reply

pandaexplosion

I'm one of the people who only use the chronological feed. I won't use the algorithm feeds. I want to know how much new stuff there is since last looked. That helps me gauge how long want to spend going through it. Occasionally, I either run out of content or there's too much content to catch up with. In both instances, my likely reaction is to go do something else.

don't see that as a service failing to provide a good service, the opposite in fact.

Algorithm sorted feeds exist to trap the user in an infinite stream with no way to reasonably gauge how much they've consumed or how much is left. That doesn't serve me. I think there's a good case to be made that it doesn't serve the platforms either. At least, it's not solely positives for them.

8 more comments...

Platformer

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?