Chronological feed

The rule is simple. If you follow 50 accounts, the feed is their posts merged together and sorted by time. Nothing is boosted, hidden or slipped in from accounts you don't follow (apart from ads on some platforms). When you scroll down to a post you have already seen, you are caught up. Strictly it is reverse-chronological — newest at the top — but everyone just says chronological.

Example: your friend posts at 9:02, a club you follow at 9:15 and a coworker at 9:40. Open the app at 10:00 and you see the coworker first, then the club, then your friend — no matter which one collected the most reactions.

Because the order depends only on who you follow and when they post, a chronological feed is shaped entirely by your social graph. Follow more people and it gets busier; unfollow a noisy account and it gets calmer straight away.

• Predictable: you know why every post is there — you followed its author.
• Finite: you can reach the end, which makes it easier to put the phone down.
• Fair to quiet accounts: a friend who posts once a month is not buried because their post got few reactions.
• Good for timely posts: announcements and events appear when they happen.

• Volume: follow a few hundred active accounts and you will miss most of what was posted while you were away.
• Loud accounts win: whoever posts most often takes up most of the screen.
• No discovery: you only see people you already follow, so finding new people depends on search, hashtags or an algorithmic feed.