Like it is with everything in life, each of us like different things and favour some option over other. Whether it’s your favourite wine, tenderness of your steak or favourite movie genre - there are personal preferences for everything.

Favourite blog subscription method (as a reader) or social media default feed choice (as a user) are no different. Whenever you find a new blog that you want to “follow”, you probably have a preference how you’d like to stay updated.

It’s certainly true that giving users too many choices, can cause inability to choose anything at all. However, I’d argue that giving some options is still better for the end user than force feeding a choice that platforms owner’s insist being the best. Recent example of this is of course Adam Mosseri’s (head of Instagram) comment on , why following feed as the default in Instagram (or Threads) wouldn’t work.

Of course we’ve thought about it, and we’ve tested it and tried it a number of times. Every time we have, there’s a sub-group of people who are happy, there’s a bunch of people who forget that they’re in it, and then overall, everybody who’s in it uses Instagram less and less over time, and when we ask them questions like ”how satisfied are you with Instagram?”, they actually report being less happy with Instagram more and more over time, on average. And then there’s these second order effects where their friends start using Instagram less [and] because they use it less, they send less likes and comments, messages, and then there’s all of this other stuff, and it just gets worse and worse, and quickly.”

Well, from a business perspective, of course that makes sense. Showing ads and sponsored posts on the “for you feed” is likely way more profitable and way less annoying than cramming those in the chronological feed, true. Letting the user default to the chronological (adless) feed, would probably be bad for the ads business side of thing. And we all know how big part of their business that side is, so I would not be placing bets on us getting to choose that feed as default in the near future (if ever).

However (and this is what I love about building personal websites) in here, we (bloggers) get to choose the rules of engagement. While we certainly can limit the options our readers have when it comes to following our blogs, there’s really no need for restrictions. Whether the reader favours email newsletter over RSS (or vice versa), let them make the choice. If you want to promote something in your blog post for revenue, go right ahead (the affiliate links work just as fine in both options). And now with the Fediverse coming to live, readers can even opt-in following your blog via their favourite Fediverse platform. How cool is that!

The key point is: Let them choose. Your followers, readers, and users are capable enough to make the right decision for themselves.

Featured photo by Jonas Jacobsson