The content our participants saw on social platforms could have both positive and negative impacts, for example, helping them learn about being LGBTQ+ or reinforcing "toxic" ideals about what it means to be a queer man. Many also expressed desires for more control over content algorithms and here we describe our recommendations for allowing this.
Let people customise their algorithm
Most social platforms let people flag content that they're interested or not interested in, but people should have the ability to customise their algorithm beyond this.
The mockup on the right shows an example of how to let people do this. It lets people customise how much suggested content is shown, lets people pick who lists of accounts from which to display content, allows hiding NSFW content, and lets them pick topics to include and exclude.
Participants in the evaluation sessions appreciated this level of customisation: "I really like that you can customise each of those categories even further. It's not just what Instagram thinks is positive vibes, it's what you specifically want when you select that tab".
Let people create and switch between multiple algorithms
Letting people customise their preferences becomes much more powerful if they can switch between different algorithms. For example, one of our co-design workshop participants described wanting a "mental health algorithm" for days when he did not want to see anything that would make him feel bad about himself. Others described how they wanted to setup different feeds for hobbies or interests too.
The mockups on the right show how this could be implemented on Instagram. The left one shows a new control at the top of the feed to select the current feed, while the right shows the interface to edit focus modes.
As one participant described in reponse to the concept: "I think that it's such a dream that we'd be able to go into a platform and be like, 'This is the kind of experience I want to have on here today'".
Bluesky offers a similar feature, although for now its custom feeds require "a bit of developer familiarity".
