Key Points
- Instagram's "Your Algorithm" shows the topics shaping your Reels recommendations and lets you edit them.
- The interest list is built from your activity and summarized by AI; you add or remove topics.
- It launched in the US in December and is expanding to Explore and the rest of Instagram.
- The feature follows TikTok's "Manage Topics," but Instagram's list is personalized, not generic.
For most of its life, the Instagram algorithm was a black box you fed with watch time. "Your Algorithm" cracks it open. The feature shows you the topics Instagram thinks you care about and lets you add the ones you want more of and delete the ones you don't.
How it works
Open it from the icon in the upper-right of Reels or Explore — two lines with hearts. Instagram shows a list of interests it has inferred from your activity and, in its words, summarized by AI. You type in topics to see more or less of, and on Explore you can add or remove interests straight from the topic pills at the top. The shift is from invisible signals to settings you control in seconds.
Mosseri's framing
"We want people to have more control over their Instagram experience, and hope this will be a meaningful new way to shape what you see," Adam Mosseri said when the tool was introduced. It is a transparency play: showing users the machinery, then handing them a few of the levers. Instagram started with Reels in the US in December and has been extending it to Explore and the rest of the app.
The competitive read
The move follows TikTok's "Manage Topics," but with a difference. TikTok shows roughly a dozen generic categories; Instagram's list is personalized to you and lets you add your own. In a feed economy built on opacity, letting users edit their own inputs is both a genuine control and a smart retention pitch — the more a feed feels like yours, the longer you stay in it. It rhymes with the broader platform turn toward AI features users can actually steer.
Source: TechCrunch, Thurrott
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