Instagram isn’t thrilled about a proposed change to the way Australians use the platform. The Australian government is weighing legislation that would give social media users more control over their feeds. If it passes, users could opt out of algorithmic recommendations and switch to a feed built from the accounts they actually follow.

That sounds simple. It also sounds like the early days of Facebook, back when it was “a place for friends.” Instagram head Adam Mosseri argues that giving users that choice would make the platform worse, and that people wouldn’t like the result.

Mosseri recently said a following-only chronological feed isn’t as interesting as a “very vocal minority” believes.

His reasoning comes down to posting volume. Brands post far more often than creators. Creators post far more often than friends. The algorithm currently papers over that imbalance, so most users have no idea how little their friends actually post. Strip the recommendations out, Mosseri says, and people would either run out of friend posts or drown in brand content.

The result, by his account, would be a less engaging experience and less time spent on Instagram.

The proposal comes out of Australia’s broader effort to address social media harms, with the aim of giving users more say over how they interact with platforms. It wouldn’t eliminate algorithmic feeds. It would simply make them optional.

Researchers are digging into how recommendation algorithms work and what they do to the people using them. In February, Georgia Tech announced a study tracking the TikTok use of more than 10,000 adolescents.

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