Instagram’s CEO has announced that users will find their experience worse without an algorithm, experience more brand-related content, and spend less time on the app.

The Australian government is aiming to provide users a choice of feeding on algorithm-curated content and a chronological feed of pages they follow, in a move announced by the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, on Tuesday, which follows the comments. Labour will also be introducing a number of measures to tackle online harm – on the sites.

Instagram’s chief executive, Adam Mosseri, declined to comment specifically on the proposal by the Albanese government in a briefing with journalists on Thursday to launch the company’s Algo Confessions series in Australia, but said that Instagram has several algorithms in place. Those include ranking more typically seen friends’ stories or more frequently appearing users in message suggestions based on interactions, and the algorithm that determines what they see in their feed, among other things.

The launch of the series in Australia is the first outside the US. It features celebrities and influencers detailing how Instagram determines what content ends up in a user’s feed, and how the user can have some control over that by adding or removing tags in their settings.

Mosseri said just a “very vocal minority” wants social media to go back to reverse chronological feeds, which he said would just incentivise people to post more.

“What ends up happening is the best way to get more reach is just to post more often, and those who can afford to post the most often do and then therefore get the most reach,” he said.

“Well, it seems that friends post less than creators; creators post less than brands and companies.”

People would be “overwhelmed” with content from brands, while creators and friends would be drowned out, he said.

What happens is they just become a little bit less interested in the experience, and then there’s less reach available, and people get increasingly and increasingly angry about that.

That engagement and user satisfaction decreases, he said.

“So it’s this interesting thing that there’s a difference between what one person may want and the difference when you actually blow up the individual to the full community,” he said.

“That’s not to say that ranking is perfect; it’s not. We make mistakes – one of the things that frustrates me about ranking is that we end up over-optimising for things that we can measure and undervaluing things that are more difficult to measure.”

It essentially was a “black box” ranking algorithm that Instagram was attempting to “free up” for users to have more control over—by stepping back from topics it recommends they avoid, Mosseri said.

In the future, Meta’s AI models might even enable users to communicate with the app to gain insights into why they are encountering specific types of content, he said.

Mosseri said he was not convinced that the app was the definition of “addictive.”

“I don’t believe Instagram is addictive – I know that is controversial to say – I do think we often confuse the way we colloquially use the word addicted … like ‘I’m addicted to this show, and I’m binge watching it, which is not good for me’.”

He said that addictions that are clinically defined come with withdrawal symptoms, but there is none with social media, and “those things are different”.

Mosseri has said this in the past. Some users have been shown to have a “need” for a platform without realising it, and research indicates that frequent use of algorithms “affects dopamine pathways” that results in dependency that is “analogous to substance addiction”.

In the landmark US court case centred on the addictive nature of Meta’s products, the company’s lawyer last month conceded to the court that it was “no dispute” that people can struggle with social media, but the company has tools to address that. Meta has since agreed to pay US$18bn for the settlement and has stated that it did not commit any wrongdoing.