On Wednesday, Instagram began rolling out a feature called "Your Algorithm" in the U.S., an AI-powered control panel that lets users see the topics shaping their Reels recommendations and edit them directly.
When you're watching Reels, a new icon in the upper right corner -- two lines with hearts on them -- opens the "Your Algorithm" panel. Inside, Instagram shows an AI-written summary of what it thinks you've "been into lately," based on your activity. Under that summary is a list of specific topics the app believes you care about. Users can tap to see more or less of certain topics, delete ones they don't want, or type in new interests they'd like to see more often.
Instagram says recommendations will update in real time as people add or remove topics, and users can even share the interest summary to their Stories -- a social-media twist similar to Spotify Wrapped.
The feature is Instagram's answer to TikTok's "Manage Topics" setting, which also lets people dial up or down certain themes in their For You page. But while TikTok offers a limited set of broad categories, Instagram's list is more personalized and allows users to add their own topics, giving finer control over what shows up in the Reels feed.
Meta, Instagram's parent company, has been under pressure from regulators and parents to make its recommendation systems more transparent and less likely to surface harmful content, especially for teens.
In a video announcing the new feature, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said that this new feature will allow users to be able to "see and control" what content they're seeing.
For families, people of faith and anyone trying to keep their social media aligned with their values, the feature could offer a practical way to retrain the algorithm rather than simply uninstalling the app or starting over with a new account.
Because users can both remove topics and add new ones, the tool can be used in a few concrete ways:
Instagram algorithms will still rely heavily on behavior -- what people watch all the way through, what they save and what they replay -- so "your algorithm" doesn't erase the need for intentional scrolling. But it does give users a clearer way to say, in effect, "more of this, less of that" in one place.
For now, "Your Algorithm" is available in the Reels tab for users in the United States, and Mosseri says that it will roll out to more markets in the coming weeks.