Illustration by The Globe and MAil
Last week, I opened my Instagram Explore page, a grid of algothrimically-chosen videos and photos the app thinks I want to see, and was hit with a sense of discomfort.
It was full of dozens of before-and-after photos of women’s bodies that felt borderline triggering, fan edits of Luigi Mangione, the highly-memed alleged assassin, and clips of Ariana Grande from the Wicked press tour I had seen months ago on TikTok. In between, a sprinkle of recipes for high-protein breakfasts and stick-thin fashion influencers.
This is because every user’s Explore page is populated with a unique menagerie of content based on many factors, such as the photos and videos you’ve liked, saved or shared on the platform, accounts you already follow, and location tags. In other words, according to Instagram’s all-knowing algorithm, the Explore page is a reflection of who you are on the platform.
What I saw on my Explore page is not who I want to be.
Sure, I had clicked on a few fitness influencers and browsed some red carpet carousels. But the sheer multitude of weight loss and celebrity content was off-putting.
I was experiencing what many academics, researchers and my fellow cohort of the Extremely Online describe as “algorithmic anxiety,” that feeling when curated social media feeds are incongruent with how you perceive yourself. Social media companies don’t fully explain how their algorithms work or decide which content to boost or bury, leaving users mostly in the dark. And yet algorithms now dictate so much of our online experiences: The music we listen to on Spotify, the videos we watch on TikTok, the products on Amazon results pages, even who you see on dating apps.
It’s not only me feeling this. On X and Reddit, too, users complain that they also feel misrepresented, offended or simply bored of their Explore pages, the result of an algorithm that can be hypersensitive to your scrolling whims. If you watch a couple too many videos of influencers praising botox treatments, your feed could easily turn into a slew of anti-aging tricks and medi spa ads.
Last month, Instagram realized this was a problem too and released a feature that allows users to reset the recommended content that appears throughout the platform. TikTok also allows users to reset their For You page recommendations, while on YouTube, users can delete the history of videos they’ve watched in the past.
“This is a big thing to do,” said Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, in a video launching the reset function. “It’s going to make your Instagram much less interesting at first, because we’re going to treat you as if we know nothing about you and your interests, and it’ll take us some time to learn those things again. But if you do end up in a place where you really don’t feel good about your experience, this gives you an out.”
I wanted out.
To reset my recommended content, which appears in the regular feed, stories and Explore page, I went to my profile settings, scrolled down to “Content preferences” and selected “Reset suggested content.” I was asked to confirm one more time.
What I saw on my new Explore feed was even worse than before.
The fitness influencers, paparazzi photos and recipes had been replaced with grotesque meat-processing videos (I’m a longtime vegetarian), misogynist memes and The Substance-style body horror reels (e.g. applying gloss to surreal, bulbous lips or a woman using makeup to cover up clusters of holes on her face, a nightmare scenario for those with trypophobia). Many posts were clearly AI-generated, with an alarming amount involving President Donald Trump and humanoid eagles in military garb. I was introduced to niches I didn’t know existed, while also being inundated with other content I knew was online but which my old feed was impervious to, such as misogynistic jokes and cruel prank videos.
“This is what’s called the cold-start problem. What they do is just give you a bunch of random stuff and see what sticks,” said Fenwick McKelvey, an associate professor at Concordia University who studies social media policy and algorithms.
But because social media platforms prioritize content with engagement, the posts that are most successful aren’t necessarily the highest quality, but audiences can’t help slowing down to look, in the the same way we cannot help but stare at the wreckage of a car crash on the highway.
“Everybody’s joking about all the AI slop on Facebook and Instagram, but the profit logic is if you can’t really predict what’s good content, just flood the zone with mediocre content and hope something goes viral.”
When tech companies first switched feeds from chronological order to algorithmic, they almost universally justified it in part by saying it would bring users closer together, explains Samuel Hardman Taylor, an assistant communications professor at the University of Illinois Chicago. But his research has shown this is dependent on whether you feel your algorithm represents you.
“For people who felt like the recommended content did validate and support their interests, hobbies and who they are as a person, it actually promoted more interpersonal interaction with their social networks. They reported commenting, liking and viewing their friends’ content more, suggesting a responsive algorithm does promote a degree of interpersonal interaction,” said Mr. Taylor about research published in 2024.
“On the flip side though, we also found that if people felt like the recommended content was dismissive of aspects of their identity, they reported that led to them feeling more lonely.”
After a few days with my new algorithm, I noticed that whenever I’d watch a new type of content – bridal hairstyles, a recipe – I’d see an explosion of related content on my Explore page. I also kept seeing plenty of AI slop, which I was oddly compelled to keep clicking on.
I quickly grew tired of seeing Mr. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin with anthropomorphic eagles and bears. So, I decided to reset my algorithm, again. But this time being more mindful that the algorithm is instantly responding to my every click, assembling a persona for me.
Yet as Mr. Taylor points out, it’s likely users who reset their algorithms will fall into the same problems again.
“Resetting allows us to restart, but it doesn’t address some of the more fundamental problems, such as the opaqueness of algorithms,” said Mr. Taylor. “The refresh gives us some agency, but we still live in this secretive space of how Instagram’s recommendation algorithms work.”