Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Instagram is bringing back one of its more chaotic features, now reworked for the short-form video era.
A new tab in the Reels feed will serve up videos that a user’s friends have liked or added commentary to, Instagram leader Adam Mosseri announced in a video message today. Users will be able to see which friends have liked a video — a callback to the old Instagram “activity” feed that was killed in 2019.
“We want Instagram to not only be a place where you consume entertaining content, but one where you connect over that content with friends,” Mosseri says. In the new feed, you’ll be able to see which friends have liked a post and which have left a temporary “note” on a Reel.
Image: Meta
Be careful what you like, I guess?
That sounds nice in a ideal world, but given the way that the previous “activity” feed was scrutinized, I’m willing to bet a lot of users actually don’t want their friends to see all the Reels they’ve liked. (I’m not sure what benefits or insights my friends would get from seeing that I liked every single Shohei Ohtani post that crossed my feed, but OK.) It also might discourage people from engaging publicly with content in this way to avoid it being shown to all of their friends. It’s also not a given that you share interests or hobbies just because you’re friends with someone — for many people, it’s the hyper personalized nature of TikTok that makes the experience interesting in the first place.
Other platforms like X have gone the opposite route by hiding users’ liked posts, in part because people kept getting caught liking embarrassing things (if someone catches Ted Cruz liking thirst trap Reels, please email me immediately). Meta didn’t immediately respond to questions about whether users can opt out of having their activity shown in the new Reels feed.
Instagram stands to benefit if its biggest rival, TikTok, is forced to pull out of the US this weekend. Reels is Instagram’s answer to TikTok, but many creators and users say the atmosphere on Reels doesn’t live up to the environment TikTok has cultivated. While the new feature might stoke drama and pull some users into the Reels feed, it could also have the opposite effect for those who don’t want all their interests broadcast out.