150,000 people don't want Instagram to change their post feed as per this petition

A few days ago, Instagram announced that it will change the way it shows us our news feed in a major way. Instead of being chronological, like it currently is, an upcoming update will change the way we see new posts based on their popularity and our relationship with the poster. The reason for this, as stated by Instagram, is because users are following so many people that they miss 70% of their feed, which means most of the posts that would be “important to us” in one way or another remain unseen. According to Instagram, the update will be able to separate the wheat from the chaff and give us the images that are most interesting to us at the top, then follow with the rest of the posts in chronological order.

As one might imagine, a lot of users are not too happy about that. And it's not just about “fearing change”. We've seen Facebook perform the same switch to an algorithm-based feed a while back, and despite the fact that we've had plenty of time to get used to it, a lot of users still loathe it. The issue here is that many people truly “follow” only profiles that they are actually interested in. Therefore, an algorithm tampering with their browsing experience is not helpful, but just mixes up the chronological order of their viewing.

So, disgruntled users have started a petition on Change.org to try and sway Instagram in another direction. The algorithm-based feeds would be harmful to small businesses, the petition claims, possibly because their smaller popularity would cause the algorithm to believe that their posts are not as engaging to their followers. At the moment of writing this article, the petition has been signed by more than 150,000 people, so obviously, it's an issue that a lot of users take to heart.

If you wish to voice your opinion on this matter – the Change.org page is linked below, but go ahead and speak your mind in our comments section as well.