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The rise of taste, human authenticity and judgment in an AI world | Adam Mosseri (Head of IG)

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The bottom line

As AI makes building cheap, the scarce skills become taste, judgment about what to build, and trust in real people, and Instagram is betting on all three. Teams should shrink to small generalist pods with a few top specialists, and feeds should reward authentic creators over synthetic abundance.

Key takeaways

  • When building gets easier, deciding what to build matters most. 0:08
    • Adam argues that strategy must be controversial, so a reasonable person could disagree with it. Otherwise you only compete on raw execution. 24:35
    • An AI asked lazily for a strategy gives a predictable answer the competition would expect. It needs steering on constraints like talent, regulation and brand identity. 27:16
  • Small pods of generalists plus a few elite specialists now replace the old baker's dozen team. 2:58
    • Pods have four to six engineers and a "product staff" generalist, an evolved PM who does some design, data science and research work. The core team is about six or seven. 3:18
    • Basic funnel analysis, once bespoke data science work, now comes from internal tools. Fewer people to coordinate also means less design by committee. 6:45
  • People who stay curious, try things and know what AI can and cannot do will do best. 14:15
    • Adam's baseline hiring traits are grit, fast learning and self-awareness. He adds curiosity and willingness to look foolish, like learning a language. 14:40
    • Companies must still grow tomorrow's senior specialists, or they will regret it in a couple of years. 13:05
  • Instagram's algorithm knew less about you than people assumed, but LLMs are closing that gap. 34:38
    • Recommenders ran on unreadable embedding vectors, not meaning like "likes surfing". LLMs can now describe a region of that space, such as "deep pourover coffee snobbery". 35:50
    • The "your algorithm" feature lets users see and edit their inferred topics. Pure chronological feeds get swamped by high-volume publishers, and usage and satisfaction fall. 39:00
  • A flood of AI content should push people toward authentic creators, which favors Instagram. 41:21
    • Adam would not filter AI content. He would label it, and show more about each account, such as profile age. 44:32
    • Labeling AI is hard because detection may fail as models improve. Labeling camera-captured content may be more practical long term. 46:46

If a strategy can't be controversial, a reasonable person should be able to disagree with it, because otherwise you're probably just trying to compete on raw execution.

Adam Mosseri

Chapter summaries

0:00 Introduction to Adam Mosseri

One in three people alive uses Instagram monthly
Mosseri runs this reach after designing Facebook's early news feed and its ranking system.

Adam Mosseri leads Instagram after a career spent building feeds and ranking systems.

  • Mosseri's background runs through feeds, ranking and design. 0:16
    • Over three billion people use Instagram monthly, one in every three people alive.
    • He designed and led the early Facebook news feed and ran the team behind its ranking algorithm.
    • He took over Instagram eight years ago from founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger.
    • He is also the public face of the controversy that comes with changing the product.

2:09 How product teams are changing inside Meta

Instagram pods halve team size and pull in specialists
Old teamNew pod
Size~13 (baker's dozen)6–7 core
Engineers2–3 each Android, iOS, server4–6 generalists
Product rolePMProduct staff (PM + design, data, research)
SpecialistsDesigner, data scientist, researcher on teamSenior expert pulled in when needed
Shaped byA code reviewer per codebaseLess coordination, less committee
Fewer people to coordinate means faster decisions and less design by committee, beyond any AI productivity gain.

Big-company teams are moving from large specialist groups to small pods that pull in experts only when the work needs them.

  • Specialists now join a pod for the work, instead of sitting in every team. 2:36
    • The old shape was two or three Android, iOS and server engineers each, plus a PM, designer, data scientist and, if lucky, a researcher.
    • That shape came from needing a code reviewer who knows the codebase for everyone who writes code.
    • AI productivity is only part of the gain. Small teams are often just more effective.
    • Pricing strategy work calls for a senior data scientist.
    • A really novel experience calls for a very senior product designer.

5:48 Blurring roles and career anxiety

As functions bleed together, taste keeps designers valuable, and the best generalists will often be converts from specialist crafts.

  • A pod can run with no specialists at all. 6:01
    • It might be four engineers and one product staff, with no data scientist, designer, researcher or content designer.
    • Much of a big company's data science is mechanical data pulling. The art-and-science part remains.
    • A reels-creation drop-off analysis once needed a data scientist. Product staff can now run it with internal tools.
    • Fiona Fong, who leads engineering for Claude Code, hires builders with taste who work end to end, and deep domain experts.
  • Mosseri is bullish on designers because taste is hard to automate. 8:18
    • Designers are anxious because engineers and product staff now do design too.
    • AI-built apps have a recognizable vibe, so taste stands out.
    • Lenny notes that designer job postings are flatlining so far.
    • Mosseri flags his own bias, since he started as a designer.
  • Strong designers and data scientists will move into product staff. 9:40
    • Instagram senior designer Nate just transferred into product staff.
    • Great designers already hold strong views on strategy, business and go-to-market.
    • He calls it the age of the generalist, yet real specialists still matter.
    • He romanticizes the phenomenal ML engineer but says range has always been his own strength.
  • Anxiety is everywhere, but functions survive in new shapes. 11:27
    • People worry about competition, job displacement and unforeseen consequences.
    • Specialists who aren't on the path to senior can move into generalist roles, a soft landing.
    • He warns against overconfident predictions, since there is too much flux.
    • Benedict Evans said much the same on the podcast recently.

14:01 Hiring traits that matter now

Adaptable people gain value, while leaders of huge organizations are needed less.

  • Fewer huge organizations means less demand for leaders who run them. 16:13
    • Large-organization leadership is its own craft, different from management.
    • Some teams will stay very large, but smaller teams will be more common.
    • The job won't vanish. Mosseri just expects fewer such roles to hire for.
    • He expects curiosity and willingness to try things to be premiums across industries for 10 to 20 years, though his language-learning analogy is a guess with no research behind it.

16:48 How AI is resetting who succeeds at work

AI changes what each job consists of, so success goes to people whose strengths fit the new work.

  • The work itself is different, so different people thrive. 17:12
    • Engineers once spent 40 to 60% of their time writing code. At the labs they now mostly plan and review it.
    • Someone who loved writing code may hate that. Someone slow at coding may love it.
    • Who succeeds depends on whose strengths align with the tools' needs and the business's needs.
  • AI lowers the technical barrier to contributing across functions. 17:55
    • Mosseri can program again for the first time in about 10 years. He calls himself a mediocre engineer on a good day, but now he writes code responsibly.
    • Designers program, engineers pull data, and data scientists draft design proposals.
    • Facebook designers once had to pass a technical loop. It was dropped because it was too hard to hire for.
    • He rejects the binary of "AI pill" versus anti-AI. The tools are amazing at some things and remarkably bad at others.

19:38 How Meta thinks about token spend and AI costs

Token costs will rise with usage before falling with competition, so Meta treats them as a managed resource, not a contest.

  • Meta sets no token limits yet, but caps will probably come. 21:54
    • Cost was reined in by shutting down silly projects, since a token incinerator is easy to build.
    • Token spend is one more resource to allocate, like GPUs, storage and headcount.
    • Mosseri calls a leaderboard of token spend a terrible idea.
    • Once you compare dollars in to value out, wasteful uses show up fast.
  • A strong engineer's token burn could match their salary within a year or two. 22:33
    • Caps should be proportional to the company's trust that you use tokens with positive return.
    • Costs rise because usage grows, not because prices rise.
    • Prices should fall as frontier labs compete, so he expects a bit of a roller coaster.

23:23 Where human judgment still matters

As coding becomes steering AI, human work shifts toward vision and strategy, which looks like management.

  • Directing AI is a management craft with the same autonomy trade-off as leading people. 24:28
    • The job is to define success, choose how prescriptive to be, and give feedback along the way.
    • Too prescriptive stifles good ideas. Too open-ended wastes time in the wrong direction.
    • Mosseri defines vision as the state of the product you want to reach.
    • Strategy is an opinionated path to that vision.

25:56 Why AI is not automatically great at strategy

Be the centaur, never the reverse centaur
Handing work to AI isn't automatically a win, especially strategy, where the human should set the bounds and push the model to argue back.

AI helps with strategy only when pushed critically, and people should keep control of what they hand off.

  • A good strategy partner is a model that pushes back. 27:33
    • Telling the model to be critical makes it more clarifying.
    • Models differ in how willing they are to push back, and Mosseri recommends one that likes it.
    • He says he wants the real sort of intelligence, not the pleaser.
  • Handing work to AI is not always a win. 28:07
    • A "centaur" is a human in charge of the AI. A "reverse centaur" is a human doing the AI's bidding.
    • If AI hands out the strategy, few people will want the job.
    • Some workflows are win-win to outsource. For others the risk outweighs the benefit.

30:36 Why great product leaders are curators

The best product leaders choose and assemble ideas, people and strategies more than they invent them.

  • Great leaders build an environment where good ideas surface and get chosen. 30:52
    • Mosseri doesn't care whether the strategy comes from the lead, only that it is strong and everyone buys in.
    • Some leaders are prolific idea machines, but many of the best are curators of people, ideas, technologies and strategies.
    • It is hard to curate well without some ideas of your own.
  • Team chemistry matters as much as individual strength. 32:35
    • For trust and safety he needs engineering, product staff, data science, design and research leads who complement each other.
    • He calls trust and rapport more art than science. Strong ones let a team work through almost anything.
    • Two people he admires sometimes can't get along, and then he splits them. That is a personality issue, not a competency one.

34:23 What Instagram's algorithm actually knows about you

The algorithm long guessed from crowd behavior and is only now becoming as sophisticated as people assumed.

  • Recommendations used to rest on overlap between people, not understanding of you. 37:40
    • The logic was: you liked these photos, others who did also liked those, so you may like them too.
    • Mosseri says people overestimate how much semantic understanding the algorithm had.
  • Letting users steer the feed goes beyond topics. 37:14
    • The feature aims to give people agency as feeds fill with recommendations.
    • Future requests could be non-topical, like more fun content or more friends.
    • Users could also cap repeats, such as no seven photos in a row.

38:08 Why chronological feeds often disappoint users

Chronological feeds let publishers drown out your friends
New York Times350
Your best friend1
Under pure recency everyone is pushed to post more, so volume wins over what you actually want to see.

A feed is a system of incentives, and a purely chronological one rewards volume over what people want to see.

  • Feed design has to account for the incentives it creates. 38:45
    • Mosseri compares it to designing a city: set the mechanics, then ask how people will act inside them.
    • Under pure recency, everyone is pushed to post as much as possible.
    • The New York Times can post 50 things a day, while a best friend might post once a week.
    • Individual interest and what works at scale pull apart, so the feed needs a view of the whole community.
  • The newest post is often not the most interesting one. 39:46
    • Recency matters for relevance, but it is only one input.
    • His example: a sister in Germany gets engaged overnight, and he would rather see that first than a brother's po' boy sandwich.
    • He wants to give people agency over the feed, but in a way that also works for the business and the community.
    • Someone who switches to chronological may be happy at first. Surveys at massive scale show satisfaction sliding over the following months.

40:56 Why AI content may be a tailwind for Instagram

As power moves from institutions to individuals, a platform built around creators gains when synthetic content is everywhere.

  • Power is shifting from institutions to individuals, so Instagram invests in creators. 41:44
    • Sports is the clearest case: players are now more relevant than teams, which was not true when he was a kid.
    • "Creators" is meant broadly: a journalist, an artist, someone selling scarves they sew.
    • Creators have been one of Instagram's two or three most important audiences for as long as he has been there.
  • Instagram was never just about the content, but about the person behind it. 43:08
    • The point of view, the reason for sharing and the perspective are what he expects to matter more.
    • He says Instagram is not the best at many things, but it is the largest creator platform by how it counts creators.
    • Unsafe content is removed, and good versus bad AI content is sorted by ranking and personalization, like any other content.

43:42 The future of AI and human content in the feed

Content should be judged by its point of view and its source, so what people need is the means to tell what is real.

  • AI content should be judged on its point of view, not the tool that made it. 44:20
    • Someone who loves AI content should be able to have a feed that is "AI town". Someone who doesn't should not see it.
    • He likes Plastic Dream Sequence: singing doll-like figures that are clearly AI and have a clear aesthetic.
    • If Only AI is a Paris creator who chains several models for image, video and music. Mosseri compares him to a painter whose tool is AI.
  • Fake AI accounts are a new spam vector that needs a crackdown. 47:18
    • An AI creator is fine in itself. The abuse is accounts like an "AI monk" selling bogus supplements without making clear it is AI.
    • Marking content and marking accounts are different jobs, and both are useful.
    • The goal is that people can tell whether an account and a piece of content are real, then decide for themselves.

48:00 What Adam admires about other social platforms

Exploration ranking is harder, but it breaks small creators
ExploitationExploration
Ranks withData you already haveTests content you might like
ExampleShow what many people likeLike Bieber? Try Afrojack
Moving engagementEasyHarder
Small creatorsRarely reach new audiencesBreak out to new audiences
TikTok's edge at exploration pushed Instagram to rank for originality, breakout content and recency, not just engagement.

TikTok's strength in exploration-based recommendations is what Instagram has been learning from, and every ranking choice carries trade-offs.

  • TikTok's recommender is best at breaking small talent. 48:25
    • Exploitation-based ranking uses the data you have. Exploration-based ranking tests content you might like without knowing it yet.
    • Showing what many people like is the easy way to move engagement. His example of exploring: you like Bieber, so try some Afrojack.
    • Exploration gives niche and small creators a chance at audiences that would not have found them.
    • Instagram has invested in originality, breakout content and recency. He says it is ahead in a couple of areas, behind in others, and has line of sight to best in class for the first time in his tenure.
    • His team calls him "disappointed dad", and he is trying to give people more of their flowers.
  • Every ranking choice has trade-offs, and you cannot have everything. 50:56
    • Never seeing anything you dislike means seeing only the lowest-common-denominator content.
    • Discovering new things means occasionally seeing a miss.
    • He sees the same shape in privacy versus safety, such as whether a company scans messages. In debates he aims to lay out the pros and cons for onlookers, not to convert committed critics.

52:05 How he handles public criticism

Engaging openly with critics beats staying silent, and perspective plus time away makes the abuse bearable.

  • He speaks publicly because the debate happens with or without the company. 52:38
    • It began when he ran News Feed. He joined Twitter, where journalists lived, to show humility by arriving on their turf.
    • He believes people fear what they don't understand, so he explains what Instagram does, why, and the trade-offs.
    • His Twitter became the darkest place in his life because he followed all the biggest critics.
    • Zuckerberg's team was debating whether a social company should use its own platform for communication. Mosseri stepped in to mediate and was told to try it.
  • Perspective and time away make the hate manageable. 54:55
    • At 25, the first comment on the 2009 News Feed redesign was a vile attack on its designer. He was devastated.
    • He now compares the redesign to rearranging someone's desk, where they spend 30 to 50 minutes a day, without warning or explanation. Anger is reasonable.
    • He steps away for time with his kids and outdoors. Some months it barely bothers him, and some months it grinds on him.

56:31 Lessons from the Instagram feed redesign backlash

Four separate changes echoed into one feed backlash
Mosseri's lesson was about pace and communication, not about running the test: at Instagram's scale, every test becomes news.

The feed backlash came from several separate changes blurred into one story, and the lasting cost of testing at scale is that every test becomes news.

  • Four separate things were mistaken for one launch. 56:52
    • A video-viewer feed went to 4% of iOS users as an early test, never meant to roll out.
    • Instagram was also leaning into Reels and recommendations, while creators saw reach fall and blamed ranking.
    • Big-name creators criticized it publicly, the press covered that, and more creators joined. Mosseri calls it an echo between creators and press.
    • Video, creative tools, ranking and recommendations kept growing and drove most growth since.
  • The real mistake was pace, not the test. 58:05
    • Mosseri says Instagram pushed a little too fast and could have explained more.
    • A platform this size must be realistic about how much it can change.
    • He would take a backlash every couple of years over stagnation, since without evolving there would be no video, DMs, stories or ranking.
  • Testing at scale needs a communications plan before the launch decision. 59:04
    • Any possibly controversial test gets a plan for when it leaks, not if.
    • The team decides whether to speak proactively or reactively, and what the message is.
    • You can't launch to three billion people untested, and you can't test at that scale unnoticed. Pricing tests are especially risky.

1:00:21 Adam's biggest failure: Instagram on iPad

Mosseri's two biggest failures came from building on the wrong foundation or on an idea the market didn't want.

  • Facebook Home failed, but running it to its end taught him the most. 1:00:36
    • It was an Android fork plus HTC hardware, and his first project as a PM.
    • He became PM after the PM quit, and learned about carriers, OEMs and certification.
    • He says sometimes the best move is to execute an idea without market fit, just to learn whether it was a good idea.
  • Building Reels on top of Stories in 2019 cost Instagram its timing. 1:01:33
    • Stories had momentum, but its low read-through meant most Reels were never seen and then vanished.
    • TikTok exploded in 2020 when pandemic users wanted joy and accepted sound on, and Instagram was out of position.
    • As a designer he tried to extend existing primitives instead of adding new ones. He says he was wrong.

1:03:03 His approach to kids, screens, and social media

Mosseri's rule for kids is boundaries plus literacy: limit and approve what they do, and teach them to make things with AI.

  • Screen time is earned and apps are approved by parents. 1:03:27
    • His kids are 10, eight and six, too young for social media, but each has an iPad.
    • Three half-hour homework sessions earn 90 minutes on the weekend.
    • He says parents should approve the apps kids download, and Meta has pushed this at policy level.
    • Exceptions are long flights. He supports no phones in classrooms.
  • Kids need AI literacy, so he builds with his eldest. 1:05:13
    • He worries about weaker critical thinking, and also about kids falling behind if they never learn AI.
    • His 10-year-old made a 19-level platformer with themed levels, monsters and a skin and weapon store, using Claude Code in a couple of hours.
    • The goal is that he thinks and makes things, not just plays games.

1:06:56 What Adam wants listeners to remember

Technology decisions involve real tradeoffs made by people, so debates over them are rarely simple.

  • Critique is welcome, but the debates are more complex than they look. 1:07:23
    • Mosseri says you can disagree with his decisions, and he invites feedback.
    • He asks people to remember that people are making these calls and doing their best.
    • In his words, none of these debates are nearly as simple as most people pretend to make them out to be.

In the growth library

Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram and Threads, Meta. Instagram's head explains how Meta is shrinking product teams into lean pods with generalist product staff, why taste, strategy and curation stay human, and how Instagram thinks about ranking, AI content and creators. He also shares hard lessons from two big failures, Facebook Home and the first version of Reels, and from public backlash over a feed test.

Lessons that draw on this:

More from Lenny's Podcast · The whole library, and ask it anything

Transcript1938 lines
Introduction to Adam Mosseri 0:00
0:00

No, I think taste matters a ton. In a world where it's easier to build things, it's more important to make sure that your time is spent figuring out what you should be building in the first place. The people who I think are going to make the most of it are the ones who are cleareyed about what AI is good at and what it's not good at and also have an instinct or a nose for what it will be good at and not good at. What's something that the Instagram algorithm knows about human behavior that people may not realize?

0:30

>> I think people assume that there's a much more detailed semantic understanding of everybody's interests and preferences in the algorithm than there is. >> Is the rise of AI content a headwind or a tailwind for Instagram versus other platforms? >> I think it's going to be a tailwind, but I think it's going to be a challenge [music] in a world where there's an abundance of synthetic content. I actually think people are going to seek out creativity and authenticity and people. I don't think we should filter out AI content. I think we should [music] let you know if content is AI content or not. That's hard. By the way, >> where do you think human brains will continue to be most valuable as AI continues to eat more and more of that product development life cycle?

1:12

>> That's a great question. So today my guest is Adam Masseri, head of Instagram. Over three billion people use Instagram monthly. That's one in every three people alive. It boggles the mind. Prior to Instagram, Adam designed and led the early Facebook news feed. He also ran the team that built the Facebook ranking algorithm. And 8 years ago, he took over Instagram from its founders, Kevin Cyester [music] and Mike Kger. He's a designer turned product manager turned leader of Instagram. Adam is also famous for being the face of all of the controversy and changes that come with evolving Instagram as a product, which we talk about. Before we get into it, don't forget to check out lennisproduct.com [music] for a free year of the most interesting and well-crafted AI products in the world, available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers. With that, I bring you Adam Masseri.

How product teams are changing inside Meta 2:09
2:09

Adam, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast. >> Thank you for having me. Excited to be here. >> You've been doing product for a long time. You get to see how a lot of teams operate across Meta within Instagram. What does just kind of like the canonical product team look like in 2026? What's kind of most different today in how teams operate slash should operate versus say a couple years ago? >> It's changed a lot this year. So for the longest time at a big company like ours, the canonical team was something like two or three Android engineers, two or three iOS engineers, two or three server engineers, maybe a generalist, a PM, a designer, a data scientist, a researcher if you were lucky, and maybe that's about it. So you know on the order of a baker's dozen and that is a function of you know you want to have for anybody who's writing code someone who can review their code and that's who's

3:06

familiar with that codebase and having these different functions that are more specialized you know I think it's very different at a startup but this year it's changing we've adopted what we call pods which are just mini teams where it's call it four to six engineers who are a bit more generalists. Uh one we call product staff which is sort of an evolution of the PM. So a PM who can do some of what a designer does and some of what a data scientist does and some of what a research does leveraging um the latest tools that we have for them. And then whatever specialist they need if they if they're doing something that requires a pricing strategy you need a senior data scientist. If you're doing something that is really novel from an experience standpoint, you need a very senior product designer. So we try to build the team based on the needs of the work a bit, but then end up with a much smaller

4:03

core which is more on the order of six or seven usually. And that is a very big shift that's just happening to us this year. But they just by virtue of having less people to coordinate they can often move faster and make um better decisions a little bit less design by committee. So we talk a lot about you know AI adjusting and improving productivity and that's part of it but I think another part of it is just the small teams I think often are just more effective. This episode is brought to you by our season's presenting sponsor, WorkOS. What do OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Versell, Replet, Sierra, Clay, and hundreds of other winning companies all have in common?

4:50

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5:18

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Blurring roles and career anxiety 5:48
5:48

I I love this. So on this team of six to seven, what's what's the makeup again? And which role are you finding you have less of? If you're going from the kind of the if you're going 50% size, >> you just have less specialists, right? So you might not [clears throat] have any. You might be four engineers and a product staff and there's no data scientist, there's no designer, there's no researcher, there's no content designer. The product staff is the generalist that sort of supports all of those things. I mean, what's clearly happening is all the functions are starting to bleed into each other and the and the whole industry is wrestling with what that means.

6:21

You know, a lot of what a data scientist does at a big company, for instance, is relatively mechanical. And so, you know, there's stuff that they do that is really more like, you know, art and science. And the stuff that's really more like just pulling data, data management, you know, so some of the tools that we're building internally to understand, for instance, a traditional data science question would be a waterfall. So if you wanted to look at people creating reels, you would look at all the steps and then how people fall off on each step and try to figure out where there might be opportunities to improve things. That kind of basic waterfall analysis is like much easier now to use some of our internal tools to just pull automatically as opposed to having to have a data scientist do a bunch of bespoke work for that. So a product staff might be able to do that now and they couldn't do that a year ago. So you

7:11

just end up with this generalist these people who have more generalist shapes and then and then when you need it when you really need it you have a more senior ideally or just more creative specialist um so you know a phenomenal uh product designer or just a just a genius uh data scientist or researcher. >> This is so interesting. It's exactly what I just heard. I had uh Fiona Fong the head of engineering for cloud code and co-work on the podcast. She's force attorney's manager and she described the people she hires now are one builders with great taste that can take an idea from end to end and people with deep expertise in a very specific domain.

7:53

>> The tasting matters a lot. I really agree with that. Boris used to work at Instagram. Um I love >> Yeah. He was a senior IC at Instagram for a while. I love seeing him. He's all over threads now. It's like he's sort of like the face of Clark K. He's he's a celebrity now. He really is. He's his own little Yeah, for sure. In a world that is like on fire right now. Um, no, I think taste matters a ton. Uh, so in a world where it's easier to build things, it's more important to make sure that your time is spent figuring out what you should be building in the first place.

8:28

Um, actually, so a lot of designers right now are very anxious about their roles. you know, you've got these other generalists doing design, you've got engineers doing design, product staff doing design, but I'm actually pretty long on design or designers because they tend to have taste and I think that is something that is much more difficult to imagine being automated away. And so there's other challenges with design sometimes, but I I'm pretty long right now on designers.

8:59

I've always felt that too as it is so easy to build and all the work that AI produces is so like you can tell this was cloud design. I know what you did here. >> This is codeex. >> Well, they all have their vibe, right? Like you vibe code your apps. We call it vibe coding. You're all like, "Oh, that's a codeex app." Or, "Oh, that's a cloud app." >> Right. And that's replet. That's lovable. Like you can >> Yeah. >> You can predict these things. You like I've always thought that too that design should be thriving already now. For some reason, it hasn't yet. If you look at jobs for designers, they're kind of flatlining. I feel like the missing piece is like the PM piece of deeply understanding the business and what will grow it and what success, you know, like all that stuff, the business side of it versus the taste side of it.

9:40

>> Yeah. I think you're going to see like, you know, um we have a senior designer uh at Instagram uh called Nate who just transferred into product stuff. So, I think I think some of what you'll see is, you know, it will be harder to talk about design roles and who's a good designer because they're not going to just stay in traditional design roles. You know, if you're an amazing designer, you might you probably have strong opinions outside of just the interaction in visual design. You probably have strong opinions on product strategy, even on the business, on the go to market. And so I actually think some of our strongest product staff are going to be converts from design and from data science who are just looking to expand their reach. And they were influential across functional boundaries before, but this world where those functional boundaries are just wildly blurred just allow them just to jump in. And so sure

10:30

they'll be technically a generalist on paper, but they're they're clearly have a a uniquely, you know, strong ability in one one type of craft. Um, but they've got the ability and strong opinions to make informed decisions across other parts or other crafts. And so, you know, I don't know that all the strongest designers I have will all be in design. They they probably will be the majority, but I can imagine a bunch of really strong ones, you know, moving roles, but I mean, I should also check my own bias here, though, because I started as a designer at Facebook way back when, and I'm I switched roles. Um, >> no, designers are great. I'm a big fan.

11:07

So, this is really interesting. There's always been this like GM model where different types of functions can become GMs. It's like this product staff role feels like a similar situation where different functions can become product staff. >> Yeah. Yeah. And that was true of PM before, but it's just so much more true now. Um and it'll I mean in some ways it's probably the age of the generalist, but I I still think there's going to be a real important role for these really amazing specialists who are just they're all about going I wish I was like that.

11:36

I always had this like I romanticized like the phenomenal machine learning engineer or AI researcher or shoe maker. Like I think that's the coolest thing in the world, but it's never been my shape. I've always been um I've never been great at anything. I've always just had range. That's always been my strength. Same. [laughter] Okay. So this idea of product staff, so the idea is on these new pods. So this is like a new thing you guys are doing.

12:04

So there's these pod teams, product staff, engineers, and maybe one specialist that's going deep on say pricing algorithm or something like that. So what this tells me is there's these like adjacent roles that are maybe uh more in trouble over the years. Uh data science for example, user research for example, you talked about designers being anxious. Is there is there anything there of just like oh these maybe folks in these groups should think about shifting to other roles?

12:27

>> I I mean there's anxiety everywhere. I mean, I I I've talked to a lot of people at a lot of other companies, and it just seems like this is a lot of concern right now about competition, about job displacement, about unintended or unforeseen consequences of all this technology and all this moving so quickly. So, that's definitely happening. I I think that I think that you will see the functional lines continue to blur, but I still think there will be room for functions.

12:52

They'll just be shaped differently. They'll be more they won't all be senior IC's necessarily, but they'll all be either senior or on their way to being senior. Like you can't just have a bunch of super senior data scientists and like no new ones because then who's going to be the new super data scientists in the future. So you need to basically hire and mentor and grow talent. You know, maybe the team is smaller overall and then that those who aren't on their way to being super senior move into more of a generalist role. I think that's like a reasonable soft landing, but I do think you're going to want to make sure you're investing not only in today's senior talent for each specific function, but in tomorrow's. Um, otherwise, I think you're going to regret it in a couple years. My take. That said, who knows what the world looks like in a couple years. Um, so my big thing and is generally like don't over don't be

13:44

overly confident in whatever your predictions are because there's just too much flux right now. the Benedict Evans was on was on the podcast recently said the same thing. We don't know anything about what's going on. >> Yeah. Yeah. I like I like I like him a lot. Um I'll make sure I listen to the podcast.

Hiring traits that matter now 14:01
14:00

>> Yeah. So you talked about taste. This makes me think about So you're interviewing a lot of people, hiring a lot of people. What are some traits that you're that are like trending up in things that you look for more and more now in this world? And what are some traits that are trending down and maybe less important to you? >> I mean there are some things that are the same, right? So, for the longest time, almost no matter what the function, I always look for three things. Do you have sort of grit? Like, you know, you're kind of like you're really gonna you've got some drive, some fire in your belly. Are you a quick learner? And are you, you know, are you reasonably, ideally, very self-aware so that you can actually take feedback and know what you're good at, know what you're good at? Because if you're those three things, if you got fire in your belly, you learn quickly, and you're self-aware, you can kind of get good at

14:47

anything eventually. Um, and but if any of those things are missing, there's usually an issue. So that's sort of like the baseline right now for hiring, but just for I think people who are going to be more successful over these next five or 10 years as things change so significantly. I think two things that I I'm continuing to encourage myself to do are to stay curious and to put yourself out there. I just think you got to try things, right?

15:16

This is like, you know, to that point before where that no one really knows what's going on. You just have to be willing to try things. It's almost I don't know. Do you speak another language? >> Uh, Russian. Yeah. >> Yeah. So, when you learn another language, I think one of the most important things, one of the best predictors, this is my guess. I don't have any research on this about, you know, are you going to get good at speaking is are you willing to sound like an idiot? Are you willing just to say it and be corrected and not be offended and then just get better and better? You just have to put yourself out there. And with all of these new tools and models and technologies, I think you just have to be willing to try stuff. Um, so if you're curious and you try stuff, I think that'll, you know, you'll learn, you'll adapt. But if you're not curious or you're not willing to make mistakes or try things, I think

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you're in a ton of trouble. Uh, or at least I think it's going to be a really difficult time. So those I think are premiums, not just for hiring at a company like Meta or a team like Instagram, but I just think across the industry and multiple industries over the next 10 or 20 years. Is there something that maybe we're looking for less of for some of these functions? Um, I think that there's some that are still going to be very large teams and so you need people who are really good at managing large organizations. Large organizational leadership is its own craft and skill. It's actually different than management. Um, but I do think there'll be less of those roles. I think we'll have more smaller teams and there'll be less people who manage thousands of people. Um, and so that's not that that job will go away, but that will be less of what I'm looking for in hires because I'm going to have less

16:47

roles like that.

How AI is resetting who succeeds at work 16:48
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>> Something I'm hearing from a few folks is AI is almost kind of resetting people's impact and success in terms of some people that were maybe low performers pre-AII can now do like things they were bad at or AI now allows them to do and now they're thriving, building all these things, helping other people. Do you see that at all? Just like AI is just like lifting other people up, maybe lowering some people down. >> Yeah. I mean the job is just different.

17:13

I mean take take us take um take engineering. Engineering used to be maybe not majority but a large percentage 40 50 60% writing code. You know it's not now especially if you talk to anybody at these labs they're spending most of their time planning and reviewing code. That is a very different job. You might hate that and you might have loved just writing code or you might have you might love that and you might not have been that fast at writing code. So you know who who succeeds is a function of whose strengths are aligned with the tools needs and the business's needs. And so this is definitely happening. Another thing is you've had people who had good ideas about how to contribute to other functions but didn't have the mechanical or technical skills to do so and AI reduces the boundary to do that and then all of a sudden they can't like you know I it's for me it's kind of funny because

18:12

when I got hired at Facebook we all the designers had to be able to program that was like our I had I went through a technical loop we gave up on that because it was too hard to hire people um but I now get to program again for the first time in maybe 10 years and you know I am not a good engineer. I'm a mediocre engineer on a good day but now I can write code responsibly which is just an amazing thing. You're seeing this across all sorts of levels and seniority and functions. you know, designers who are programming, uh, engineers who are pulling data and doing strong analyses, data scientists who are putting together proposals for designs.

18:56

You know, the tools aren't all great. By the way, I think too often we have this really polarized binary outlook on the state of AI, like are you AI pill or are you anti- AI? It's like people aren't binary. I said that to the team yesterday and the state of the tools isn't binary either. You know, they're amazing at some things and remarkably bad at others. And the people who I think are going to make the most of it are the ones who are cleareyed about what AI is good at and what it's not good at and also have an instinct or a nose for what it will be good at and not good at, you know, not, you know, next month or in a couple months from now.

How Meta thinks about token spend and AI costs 19:38
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you mentioned um that AI writes all our code now. Someone tweeted this that's this idea that stuck with me for like months now of just like remember we used to be able to just write code for free. [laughter] >> I think you'll still be able to write code for free. It'll just be with a smaller model. But yes, >> I guess that's true. Like there's models that are close to free but it's like yeah that's crazy. Now it's just like >> but just think about think about the cost. Think about what you pay for a a model now and how and what the level of intelligence you're getting from that model is and then at that same price point a year ago what were you getting at some point they will just the the incremental value is will be won't matter like you know you know we're getting there I think with small projects and programming like I I think the models will matter even beyond you know this week you've got fable and

20:33

obviously mythos from Enthropic, but I spent a lot of time with that this week. I'm it's for the first time I'm like, "Oh, I'm just talking to a much more technical, much smarter engineer than I am." You know, the next version, you know, you know, a year out of that model. Do I need to pay for Frontier tokens, you know, for whatever, you know, anthropic model 6.0 is or is Fable just fine for all of my side projects? Probably just fine. probably pretty pretty cheap by then, too.

21:04

>> Yeah. When Kevin Whale was on the podcast when he was CPO at uh OpenAI, he's he famously said, "This is the worst the model will ever be." >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Still hard to comprehend that. Wow. That's it's only going to get better. >> So, on this point of uh token spend, ROI, and things like that, >> uh Meta was famous for this like leaderboard of token spend. Um >> it's a terrible idea. No leaderboards for token spend.

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>> Okay. talk about that and just how do you think about just like budgets for engineers and product teams at this point? You just like spend as much as you want? Is it like there's a cap we have? Is there any sort of thing you've kind of figured out that works well? >> Right now we've managed to get the costs rained in a little bit by like shutting down the silly things that we were doing. And so, you know, it's not that hard to build a token incinerator and that doesn't create a lot of value. And as soon as you actually look at the dollars in and value out, you might just be like, "Oh, that's just a bad idea."

21:54

And so right now we don't have um token limits for for for our engineers actually I think for anybody really. Uh I think that'll eventually have to happen um particularly if costs go up before they go down. I think they'll eventually go down because for the reasons that we just talked about but I think of it like as any other resource right like I have to decide how to deploy capacity to my different teams because I have a limited number of GPUs and CPUs and storage and RAM etc. I have to decide how to deploy opex for labeling budgets across my teams. I have to decide how to deploy payroll for headcount across my teams. I think that you can imagine at least in an year or two coming that the the burn rate of a strong engineer might be the same as their salary or their cost of employment. And if in that world like you're going to probably need to put in some caps. the cap should probably be

22:54

com like a proportional to your sort of you know the company's sort of trust in your ability to use them in an ROI positive way but I can imagine caps being healthy right now we're not there uh I think costs will go up because we'll just be using more tokens not because prices will necessarily go up but then I think prices will come down because all of these frontier models are going to be in a bit of a pricing more.

23:20

Um, so we'll see. I think it'll be a bit

Where human judgment still matters 23:23
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of a roller coaster. >> So, coming back to this idea that as you said, we've evolved from we used to write all our code to now we're approaching all code will be written by AI. And it feels like now the transition is it's not just written by AI, but it's like oneshotted by AI. Like coding now is steering AI and it's like how often you have to correct it is is coding now. And then there's uh so it's like the software development life cycle slowly being eaten by AI. Uh it'll start helping us come up with ideas I imagine more and more. The question I like to ask people is where do you think human brains will continue to be most valuable as AI continues to eat more and more of that product development life cycle.

24:05

taste like we talked about um judgment particularly around strategy right like you're you're not you might get feedback from an AI on a strategy but you're not asking an AI to come up with a strategy anytime soon or if you are then it's within the context of bounds you set so here's my goal here's my vision here are my constraints here's my job here's my budget I think that you know it looks more like management right like you are trying to define what success looks like decide how prescriptive you want to be about the path to success and then giving feedback along the way and that is its own craft you know and you it'll be interesting to see how Matt you know you know some of the same dynamics come up like I believe that if you are too prescriptive as a leader with a team you end up stifling good ideas but if you're too open-ended sometimes teams just waste time um going in the wrong direction. And so that level of autonomy

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you give a team like maybe that applies to, you know, agents in the future. Um, particularly when we're talking not just about building something, but deciding what you build in the first place. But I think of I think of vision as an articulation of the world or the or the state of the product you want to get to. Then I think of strategy is an opinionated path to achieve that vision. If a strat strategy can't be like be the best or be amazing. It has to be controversial that you have to be a reasonable person should be able to disagree with it because otherwise you're probably just trying to compete on raw execution and I think there both vision and strategy I think are going to be where our brains are spending a lot of our more and more of our cycles and I think less on on execution. Something I

Why AI is not automatically great at strategy 25:56
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have always thought is AI should be incredibly good at strategy. Because you would think here's the market, here's all the information on the market, our competitors, our metrics, our numbers, our growth, all these things. Help me figure out how to win. You think AI knowing all that would be really good at this. I think it could be. I I have found it's not unless you steer it pretty aggressively. And I don't mean towards an answer. I mean based on the constraints. It turns out when you're trying to come up with a strategy, there's a lot of things to consider, right? You need to consider the state of the technology, the personnel on the team and what's motivating them and what you can get. You know, sometimes coming up with a idea that is on the bubble, you know, it's going to actually attract some of the best talent and so that kind of like that kind of the push then goes to the idea. uh obviously the

26:44

competitive landscape, the regulatory landscape for companies as large as ours and the compliance landscape, the identity and reason to exist for the brand. Um, you know, you have to consider all of these things. I think if you ask an AI just for a strategy lazily, you're not going to get something great. You're going to get something pretty predictable that probably the competition would expect you to do. I think if you want a really more effective one, you need to think long and hard about what are all the different inputs that need to be considered. Make sure you steer the AI in a way that it's considering those as well. And it needs to be a conversation and the back and forth. But I think if you're willing to put in the work and the time, it can definitely be helpful and definitely be clarifying. Um, particularly if you tell it to be critical. Different models have very different vibes though on Yeah.

27:38

>> How willing they are to be pushed back. So [laughter] I I recommend picking one that likes pushing back. >> Yeah. Mythos has gotten really good at being like, I can't do this. Let's let's move on. Like uh there's all these >> fun has always been a little bit of a jerk in a way that I actually appreciate. >> I truly >> I appreciate it. I really do because I don't want one that's just like, "Oh, you're so right. I'm so sorry I said that." It's like, "No, hold on. I want I want, you know, I want the real real sort of intelligence. I don't want the pleaser.

28:07

This point you made about people being excited about the strategy is such an interesting one. There's this idea that I read I think Cy Corey Doctr wrote this. There's this kind of concept of a centaur centaur and a reverse centaur. So centaur is a human body horse. This is going somewhere I promise. Uh human body uh horse sorry human upper part lower part >> horse body. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Horse body where the human is in charge.

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And that's kind of we prefer that we want to be in charge. reverse end chart, which is what we want to avoid with AI, is where the AI is controlling us and we're just doing its bidding. >> It's a horse head on a human body. >> Yeah, exactly. >> It's terrifying. >> Like in a sense like Uber drivers and Door Dash people kind of this is their life, which is not great >> and [clears throat] this is the danger thing for a lot of people is like like if it's giving us the strategy and telling us here's what we're built, like no one's gonna want to do that. So that's a really interesting counterpoint to we don't want AI to be telling us the strategy almost.

29:02

>> Yeah. No, I I I think there's a lot of things to be careful about right now. And I would certainly not just assume that because you might be able to outsource some workflow to AI that you should. Um there are certain ones where I think it's really just a win-win. There are certain ones where I think is the risk outweighs the benefits. This episode is brought to you by Mercury. Radically different banking loved by over 300,000 entrepreneurs and now with command. I've been a customer of Mercury's for over 6 years. I have never once thought about leaving.

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Why great product leaders are curators 30:36
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Okay, going back to product leadership, things you've learned along your journey. Uh, we were chatting ahead of this about just things you've learned and one thing that you said about some of the product the best product leaders you've worked with is that they're less visionary and more curators. I'd love to hear more along these lines. Yeah, I mean you do sometimes find amazing product leaders who are who are just like idea machines, just prolific idea machines. But I do think a lot of the best are have have taste are have something about them that really makes wants makes really strong talent want to work with them but end up sort of being curators. curators of people, curators of ideas, curators of technologies, curators of strategies, because I don't really care if I'm hiring a strong lead for an area if the strategy comes from them or comes from somebody else. I just care that there is

31:33

a amazing strategy and everyone has bought into it and that the and then we're executing against that strategy well. And so I think that some of the best product leaders, yes, have ideas. It's hard to be a great curator if you don't have some of your own ideas, but are that embrace the reality that they can't come up with everything themselves. And so they need to create an environment in which great ideas bubble up and are uh chosen or decided upon. And so, you know, I think it's not just about curating ideas, but it's sometimes about curating teams and people.

32:13

>> I love that. I so agree. I feel like everyone's always joining a team and they just want to do vision strategy just like not actually hands-on work and no AI is coming in here. Let me do the strategy. >> Exactly. >> And I love this point that there's so much power and value and people underestimate just the the need for just like a really good curator of of the team's ideas. >> Yeah. Sometimes it's also sometimes it's not just who's good or what idea is good. It's also what is going to work given the broader context. So for instance on team building a huge thing that I'm always considering is not just like is this person a really strong candidate for this role. it is how does this person fit into their leadership team you know so if I you know for some an area like trust and safety you know I have an engineering lead I have a product staff lead I have a data science lead I have a design lead I have a

33:06

research lead you know I need to make sure that those five complement each other I need to make and that's you know about what skills each one has what weaknesses each one might have I also need to make sure that they um this is more art than science have a good vibe, right? You know, you need, you know, trust and rapport. A leadership team with strong trust and rapport can work through most anything. A leadership team without trust or rapport, like anything can become an issue. And so that that chemistry bit is is is like I said much more art than science, but that also matters. And so I think some of the best leaders and product leaders specifically also either do that instinctively or consciously, but you know they have a they have a nose for for building teams that are going to have good energy and um good collaboration, >> warm and fuzzy stuff.

34:01

>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, the flip is also true, right? Like I've I've had many times in my career I've had two people who I think are amazing and I even adore them and love them and they just can't get along. [laughter] You're like this isn't a competency issue. This is just a personality issue and you just have to just sometimes call it and split them.

What Instagram’s algorithm actually knows about you 34:23
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>> I want to transition talk to talk about Instagram the product the platform things you guys have learned there. Let me start with this question. What's something that the Instagram algorithm knows about human behavior that people may not realize? >> One of the most common misconceptions is actually in the opposite direction. I think people assume that there's a much more detailed semantic understanding of everybody's interests and preferences in the algorithm than there is. Most of what's really driven the progress in the world of recommenders over the last 5 10 years have been, you know, these large embedding models and these other techniques that basically produce artifacts that cannot be read by people. They're not legible.

35:06

They're like giant vectors. It's like, sure, I can show you the vector, but it's just going to be a bunch of numbers in like a seven dimensional space. It's like, and so when when we talk about does the algorithm know something, usually we think in these more semantic terms. It knows I like surfing and it's like it doesn't. It just has this big ass number that happens to correlate with surfing. Um, that said, I think that is starting to change, right? I think that what one of the things that LLMs are enabling is they can describe in you know words you know English for or whatever language you prefer what some of those previously illeible artifacts um are at least approximate to if not mean directly right so this is like the thing I've been really I posted about this this week this thing called your algorithm basically the idea is we take a look at all of the stuff that you've interacted with. And then you know we

36:07

all of that is in an embedding space. You can think of embedding space as a map. You can map a bunch of videos into the same map. And so videos that are close or similar. And now we can just have an LLM just be like describe that part of the map. And it can be like oh that is like deep pourover coffee snobbery. Um and that's kind of amazing. >> That is so cool >> that like you can ask the LM to look at these numbers and extrapolate. here's like the topic that you're interested in.

36:36

>> Yeah. Or look at the videos. >> And so the way you um both So you can also embed concepts into that same space. And so I mean embeddings are really the underlying technology underneath LLMs, right? That's how all the whole thing works. And so you know, so what what we what we what we do now is we let you, you know, quote unquote see your algorithm. You can see what topics we think you're interested in. Um and you can adjust it. You can add and remove things, but the idea here giving people some agency back in a world where, you know, these social media apps are getting taken over by recommendations, but we can't do a lot of other things yet, which we will be able to do. You know, you could there's things that aren't topical that you might ask for. I want more fun content. I want to see my friends more. I don't want to see my high school's kids friends kids photos.

37:28

You know, I don't know. We can come up with I don't want to see seven photos in a row, but I'm happy to see six photos in a whatever your heart can, you know, whatever your mind can come up with. So, we have a lot of work to do. And so, I'm excited about that. But, um, I think a misconception historically is until recently, we don't really know as much about you as you think. We were just like, oh, like you liked these photos, this these people also like those same photos and they like these other photos, so you might like those other photos.

37:56

Like that's kind of how I'm oversimplifying, but that's like >> yeah, >> kind of how it worked. Now only now are we actually getting as sophisticated as I think people have assumed we've been for many years. >> That is really interesting. One that

Why chronological feeds often disappoint users 38:08
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comes to mind is kind of this transition everyone eventually goes through to this like algorithmic broad global feed. Uh everyone it always feels like people think I just want to see chronologically everyone I know and follow and that's going to be my favorite feed and it continues to be proven wrong. No, you actually engage a lot more a lot more when it's this algorithmic feed of things we think you will love. Yeah, it's tough because I mean I get I mean I posted this week this thing about agency and I just got destroyed in the comments which is just part of the job. I get it right. Um do you there's but there are a couple issues with the algorith with the chronological feed. So one is and some of this is the tension between an individual's interests and what works when you scale it up, right? So if you do a pure chronological feed, the incentive for everybody is to just post as much as possible uh because it will

39:05

always be at the top of everyone who follows you's feed as soon as you post. So what ends up happening is that the feed gets overwhelmed with professional content with usually large company content and publishers because they get, you know, the New York Times can pump out 50 things a day. your your best friend won't you might get one thing a week from them and so your fee just gets taken over. Um so part of it is the incentives that emerge because when you when you design these systems it's almost like designing a city. You need to think about okay here's the here are the here's how the mechanics work. What are the incentives that arise? How are people going to act within those incentives? And then what happens? And the other thing is sometimes the most interesting thing was just not the most recent thing. Recency is an important input into relevance, but it's not the only one. My sister got

39:54

engaged last night and you know she's in Germany. >> No, she didn't. If she did, she's married. >> She got married last year. That's why it was top of mind. >> All right. >> But if she got engaged, you know, and I missed it because she lives in Europe and you know, we're different time differences. Like, do I really want to see a picture of like my brother's pobo sandwich, you know, poboy sandwich, or do I want to like see my sister's things first? So, I I It's tough. It's tough.

40:18

I'd love to figure out a way to find the right balance. I want to give people agency over the experience, but I think it needs to be in a way that creates a system that makes sense, not just for us as a business, which matters. I'm not pretending that's not an issue, but also for the overall community because we've done chronological by default and where you can make it default and you see not only does usage go down, overall sentiment goes down. the individual who made that choice might be happy at the moment, but when you just get pummeled with stuff you're less interested in over the course of months, we ask, we run surveys at massive scales, we just see people start to become less and less

Why AI content may be a tailwind for Instagram 40:56
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satisfied with Instagram. >> Kind of along these lines, uh, everybody asks you about this these days, uh, AI and content and how that all impacts everything that's going on. I want to ask you something I haven't seen someone ask you. Is the rise of AI content uh a headwind or a tailwind for Instagram versus other platforms? Do you think this helps or hurts you guys? >> I think it's going to be a tailwind, but I think it's going to be a challenge.

41:21

It's And not just because it's more content. Obviously, we're an attention business driven business. We're an advertising business. More content means potentially more attention. It that's not for free, though. Like, I don't think we're very good at ranking AI content yet. There's great AI content. There's crap AI content. you should just see the stuff you're interested in and not any of the stuff you're not interested in. But I do think that in a world where or for years now and I've said this many times, power shifting from institutions to individuals across industries, the easiest example is sports where players are more relevant than teams now. And that was not the case when I was a kid.

41:56

In that world, you're gonna I think it behooves us to invest in individuals and to invest in specifically for Instagram and creators. And I mean creators broadly. I don't just mean influencers who are promoting branded content and making, you know, native only videos. I mean anybody who's using platforms like Instagram to help do what they do, right? It could be you could be a journalist, you could be an artist, you could be selling scarves you sew, but like you're out there as yourself. for creating and sharing content that helps you achieve whatever it is you're trying to do. So, we've been leaning in that direction for many years now. That's been our, you know, one of our two or three most important audiences for as long as I've been on Instagram. In a world where there's an abundance of synthetic content, I actually think people are going to seek out creativity and authenticity and people [snorts]

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more, not less. And I think that that will help us. That doesn't mean that we won't have AI content on our platform. There's going to be bad and good AI content and we're going to try and handle that, you know, the way we normally handle content. So unsafe goes away. Interesting versus not interesting is based on ranking and personalization. Um, but I think people are going to really seek out other points of view because Instagram was never just about the content. It was always about to a certain degree the person behind the content, the point of view, the reason they're sharing it, their perspective.

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And I think that's going to become more important, not less. And I think given that we are not the best at a lot of things, but we are the largest uh creator platform, you know, you know, if you look at how we define creators and how many creators use us versus other platforms, I think it'll be a tailwind for us because I think people are going to seek out people.

The future of AI and human content in the feed 43:42
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>> And this connects to your earlier point that uh companies uh like say New York Times can pump out a bunch of AI content versus a creator. And so you're saying you kind of want to protect against that, too. Allow individuals to continue to perform well in spite of just all this AI content. >> If you just love AI content, great. Like, you should be able to have a feed that's just like AI town. And if you don't, then you shouldn't have it in your feed. Like, you know, to me, it's like I don't think we should I mean, I understand why people are, right?

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There's a I'm not oblivious to the overall paradigm shift and sort of revolution that we're sitting in. But I don't think we should judge content based on the tool that made it. Um I think we should judge it based on the content, the point of view, the person behind the content. Like I don't I don't think we should filter out AI content. I think we should let you know if content is AI content or not. I think we should let you know more about the person who posted anything so that you can make informed decisions about whether or not to believe or trust them based on, you know, knowing who they are or where they are or how many times they've changed their profile or, you know, you know, if their profile is three days old or three years old. Um, but I don't think we should be making value judgments based on what tool you used.

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>> Is there an AI uh content creator you love that you're just like, "This is so good. I love watching these AI videos." Yeah. What is she called? Plastic plastic dream sequence. Is that what it is? >> Um I think I'll check the name. Yeah. Plastic dream. Uh >> um plastic dream sequence. I have it on my phone. I'll double check. Um it's these like uh like sort of dolls, Barbies, but they're like singing songs and these little tiny little silhouettes and snippets. And it's just it's just amazing. It's like a little weird, but like also kind of amazing. And it's it's very clearly AI. It's not pretending not to be, but it's has a very clear creative and aesthetic point of view.

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And every time I come by one, I'm like, "Yep, we're doing this now. I'm going to watch this for 30 seconds." >> I have it pulled up here. And I don't I want to watch it, but I'm not going to. [laughter] >> That's awesome. >> If Only AI, that's another one. He's out of He's in France. I think he's in Paris. He uses multiple different tools and models, but he kind of tries to create these dreamscapes and animate them. So he create uses one model to create the image, another one to create the video, music, etc. Uh he's like very clearly got his own aesthetic. Um u and he's just like you could you could think of him as a painter, but like this is his tool.

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>> Is there kind of a vision of AI versus human in the feed? Do you think it'll like you said you maybe want to market like how do you think about people? Are they going to be like AI count, not AI count? How do you think about or is that still kind of a work in progress? >> Maybe we'll end up in the same place, but there's a difference between marking content and marking accounts and they're both useful and interesting. So, if content was created with AI, I think you should be able to know that. That's hard by the way because we can detect that right now, but as these models get better, we might lose the ability to detect that. So, we should also be very careful to be honest with you about how confident we are in our own sort of assessment. Um, but I think you should be able to just ask be like, "Hey, is this AI?" And we should be able to tell you. We think it probably is or we're not sure or it's definitely not or it

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definitely is. I actually think we might be might be more practical to to label camera captured content like basically non-AI content as opposed to labeling AI content long term for a couple of reasons. >> But then at the account level, I think it also matters. There is definitely an a new spam vector which is these fake accounts which by the way an AI creator that's fine there's nothing wrong with that necessarily but there is there are these spam vectors which are trying to abuse that and you know they're selling like you know bogus supplements and it's like an AI monk and it doesn't present it's not obvious that it's an AI and it's just trying to like take advantage of you know a certain aesthetic or a certain sort of stereotype like we need to figure out how to crack down on that And so I do think I do think we should be making sure that you know basically you just need to know and then you can

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make your own informed decision. Is the account a real person or not? Is the content a real piece of content or not?

What Adam admires about other social platforms 48:00
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>> When you think about other platforms uh in the space social you know content platforms are there any um features or just or like ways of of of approaching stuff that they do well that you're kind of jealous of or really impressed by? >> Yeah, there's a bunch. everybody. So many people do so much because I mean for me like one of the things that we are finally catching up with but I've been always very impressed with is Tik Tok and their recommenders ability to break small talent. Um, in the world of ranking and recommenders and rank, um, you can talk about exploitationbased ranking. That sounds terrible, but it just means like using the data you have.

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And then you can talk about exploration based ranking, going and trying to figure out, you know, what someone might be interested in that they might even not know they're interested in yet. And it is much easier to move engagement by showing people stuff that, you know, they'll probably like because lots of people like it. it's much harder to go and figure out how to essentially test content so that we can see like hey maybe you sure you like Bieber but you might also like Afrounk and so we're just going to like show you some Afrounk and see what happens. If you do the latter, this exploration based ranking, you can I think it's really good for niche creators and small creators because you give them a chance to find an audience that either wasn't going to see them before or didn't even know that they were interested before.

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So, we've invested a lot over the last couple years in ranking, not just increasing engagement, but increasing originality, increasing the number of uh pieces of content that break out, uh increasing recency to stay culturally relevant. And so a lot of that has been inspired by by Tik Tok and bite dance. I think we're catching up. Um there's actually a couple of those areas where we I think by best we can tell we're ahead of them. There's a couple where we're still behind, but for we have line of sight to I think being the best in class at recommendations for the first time um during my tenure. Uh so that's I think and they get a lot of credit for inspiring a lot of their work.

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>> Nice job. >> Well, we'll see. We're not there yet. [laughter] They call me disappointed dad. My team is always like, "Can you ease up on the disappointed dad vibe?" So, I'm I'm trying to trying to be a little bit more um generous about giving people their flowers. >> Like you say that, but that's an interesting common thread across really successful leaders is just never being satisfied. >> Yeah. >> Always feeling a blessing and a curse.

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>> Here's all the problem. It is. Yeah. on this creator piece. I think that's also, you know, people uh complain about this global algorithm not showing them all their friends, but I feel like this is a benefit of what happens when you do this now that you can break new creators into wide audience if you have this kind of global algorithmic feed, which is really great for a lot of people. >> I mean, I'm out there talking about a lot of these contentious issues and I get beat [clears throat] up a lot in the comments, which is fine. My main thing here is just to try to communicate that there's almost always trade-offs, right?

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There's that, you know, you can't just have all of the things, unfortunately. You know, you want to have um you you want to never see something you're not interested in, then you're also just going to see like the most basic general lowest common denominator stuff all the time. You know, you want to discover new and interesting things. you're occasionally going to see stuff that was just a miss, you know. You know, but this isn't just true about ranking.

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These all all these major debates have trade-offs, right? You know, uh privacy and safety, those two things are intention. You know, do you do you want a company scanning your messages or not? There's some really significant trade-offs on both sides of that debate. Um and so generally speaking, when I argue and engage in debate with people who feel really strongly about things, I'm not usually trying to convince them.

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They usually their mind is usually made up. I'm just trying to enumerate all of the different puts and takes for the rest of the people watching the

How he handles public criticism 52:05
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conversation. >> Speaking of getting torn apart in the comments, like you're so in the middle and thick of all of these really hairy situations, changing the feed, you're like in the Cambridge Analytica lawsuit, all this just like you're in the center of so much controversy and is that some >> Yep. [laughter] Oh man. Is that just like you I will lean into this. This is the thing I need to do. Or was it like Zuck being like Adam you got to be the front face of all the stuff and get in there? Like where does that come from?

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>> It started on newsfeed. So I used to run newsfeed at Facebook and I my take was that the debate was going to happen with or without us. So we might as well participate. And so I started being really active on Twitter specifically because that's where journalists really lived at the time. And I thought it would be show some humility to show up on their turf, so to speak. My Twitter ended up being like the most the darkest place in my life because I just followed all of our biggest critics. That's not a dig on Twitter. That was just what I did.

53:07

>> Um, and that's where it started and it kind of slowly built from there. For better, for worse, we've become a really important part of daily life for a lot of people. We touch a lot of people. We have a lot of responsibility and there's a lot of change and there's with change means there's going to be anxiety and stress and scrutiny. We've made great decisions. We've made mistakes. Um we've been criticized for things that I think um we've been criticized unfairly.

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We've been criticized fairly. And so we just need to accept that this debate is gonna happen broadly. So I just think it's better for us to talk about it um and just be clear about what we're doing, why we're doing it, what the trade-offs are. If people disagree, that's okay. We're not necessarily, you know, winning over friends when we talk about what we do. But I think over the long run, people are fundamentally more afraid of things that they don't understand um and about things where people are more secretive and less accessible. And so I've been tried I've tried to show up in an accessible and authentic way. Um and I've made mistakes and I [snorts] have enjoyed it at times and hated it at other times. Um but that's kind of how it started. There was also kind of a fun debate in Mark's sort of senior leadership team a long time ago where we were just talking about how we're a social media company where we

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had like a very sort of conventional approach to communication and like press releases and why don't we just use our platform. So, um, I was not in that debate, but I stuck myself into that debate, trying to mediate it. And I think, um, but that was also a reason why I ended up getting sucked in, because Mark was like, "All right, well, let's see. Like, why don't you try and see how it goes?" >> What's something that helps you deal with the the hate that flows at you every time you say something that people disagree with, >> you try to put it in perspective, right?

54:57

You know, like, so it started with I did the redesign of Newsfeed in 2009. We launched it, March of 2009 for Facebook. I was a designer. I was a front like an IC designer, front, you know, entry- level designer. And the first comment that came in was something pretty derogatory. I think it was like it was like homophobic and anti-semitic, you know, it was just like literally we're all sitting there. We launched this thing and we're just looking at the stream of comments and it's like the first one and it was specifically about they don't know me but it was like what exploive expletive um sensor sensor uh designed this [laughter] and I was like oh it was me. Um and I was like devastated. I was like 25-year-old kid and I don't know I thought about it and I came I came to this idea that if you spent 30 40 50 minutes a day at a at your desk and you organized your photos there and you wrote letters to your

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friends there and you read there and then I just came and I rearranged your desk and I didn't tell you I didn't warn you. I didn't even explain why. Like you would be pissed and that would be reasonable. Um, and that was what was happening just, you know, with millions of people. Um, so I try to put things in perspective. Um, and then I try to step away from it. Um, get time with my kids, get time outside. Uh, there there are months where it's really not hard at all and there are months where it's really really grinds on me.

Lessons from the Instagram feed redesign backlash 56:31
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>> Along those lines, there's a famous kind of reversal when you redesign the feed into this kind of video scrolly experience. There's this whole >> protest. the world protested. >> Yeah, that was pretty rough. >> Uh, what was kind of like, okay, wow, we're actually not right and we should go back. What was kind of what helped you decide, okay, let's change course. >> So, actually that one got that one three or four things got conflated. We had a redesign of feed that went to the video viewer that was a test to 4% of users on iOS. It was a not it was not going to roll out. It was just like an early test to get some sense and feedback on the idea. We were also leaning into reels a lot. We were also leaning into recommendations, so posts from accounts you don't follow a lot. And there were also creators who were upset about the fact that their reach was going down and they were blaming ranking changes on

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that. Those four things got all conflated. We had some pretty bigname creators publicly like slap us. Then the press covered that creator sort of backlash which then got more creators doing it. So we ended up with this little bit of like a multiplier effect or echo between the creator community and the press back and forth, but we were never going to launch that. That was an early test. We were we knew it was needed work. Um we actually have continued to grow video and invest in creative tools and invest in ranking and invest in recommendations and that's driven in most of our growth in the years since. um >> I think we were pushed well I don't know doesn't feel like but like it I think we were I think my real takeaway wasn't that we should have not tested that design necessarily I think we could have been we could have done a bunch of things better to explain and maybe move a little fast move a little slower I

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think we were just pushing things a little bit too fast and when you are responsible for a platform like Instagram you need to be reasonable and realistic about how much you can evolve it Now, I would much rather have backlashes like that every couple years or continue to evolve and continue to stay relevant than the alternative, which would have been like we didn't have video, we didn't have DMs, we didn't have stories, we didn't have ranking, and we wouldn't be on having this podcast right now. Um um but the cost of leaning in is that you're going to occasionally like make a mistake and you're going to definitely um pay for it. It's interesting how running experiments now is like very risky for companies at your scale. One person spots it and they're like, "Oh shit."

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>> You kind of need to have a press. You don't need to be proactive about communicating it, but you need to have a calm strategy. Like we can't for any for any design change or any test that could be controversial. We we talk about it beforehand and be like, "Okay, not if it leaks, when it leaks, what are we saying?" You know, are we, you know, should we talk about proactively, should we talk reactively? Either way, what's the message? Because you can't you can't you can't launch something to three billion people and not test it first, but you can't test something at our scale and not expect people to cover it and not and be so you have to be ready to talk about it before you even know you want to launch it. Um so it's um it makes the development cycle more complicated than it used to be.

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>> Yeah. the uh head of growth at Enthropic launched an experiment with pricing and it just went crazy on Twitter. He's like hold that 1% of people were just trend stuff like noic >> pricing particularly that one is a real you got to be real careful with that one. I've I've learned we've all learned these lessons. We should all share notes more. That's what I think. >> Here's one not to how to avoid the internet hating you for the day.

1:00:15

>> Yeah. Yeah. I'm happy to talk to that more than [laughter] >> I think he's all right. He's all right.

Adam’s biggest failure: Instagram on iPad 1:00:21
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Okay. Okay, I'm going to take us to two recurring corners on the podcast. Fail corner and hot seat corner. Fail corner. What's uh what's something that you worked on that was just a huge failure that helped you become better? >> Oh, a bunch. Um >> so any >> So I'll give you two maybe. So before Instagram, my first project as a PM was on a project called Facebook Home, which was a sort of >> fork of Android um at the operating system level and and a piece of hardware with HTC. It was a spectacular failure.

1:00:55

I learned way more in that year, year and a half, and I did it any year. I think probably in my career because I was just a design manager before that. I declared myself a PM because the PM on the project quit and I just threw myself head first in understanding carriers and OEMs and uh certification as well as Android and operating systems and just lend a ton. Um so and I'm happy I brought that project to an end because it had been going on for a long time and sometimes you the best thing you can do is execute an idea that doesn't have market fit well just to decide whether or not the idea was a good idea in the first place.

1:01:33

Another big mistake I made um during my Instagram tenure was the first version of reels was built on top of stories. Stories had a ton of momentum. This was I think 2019 and we were trying to build reels into stories because we were trying to build in the thing that was growing the fastest. But it was not a strong foundation. Most, you know, the readthrough rate on stories is relatively low. There's way more stories than most people have time to consume.

1:01:59

So most of the reels were never seen and then they disappeared. Um, and if we had the version of reels that we launched in like mid maybe I think it's like the summer of 2020 in the summer of 2019. I think I don't think Tik Tok isn't I think Tik Tok is still big and important, but I don't think it's as big as it is now because when they really took off was when the pandemic hit and a bunch of people had a lot of time at home and were looking for a little bit of joy and were totally fine with their phone having sound on. And so if you look at the numbers, the 2020 is when they exploded and we were out of position. And um on one hand, you know, I'm a designer. I'm trying to not add new things to the product. I'm trying to extend existing primitives and that was the idea. On the other hand, I was wrong and and it's a pretty big fork in the road if you just look at the overall business over the last eight years.

1:02:55

>> We created a lot of economic opportunity in the world allowing Tik Tok to to grow. >> That's good. I'm I'm glad they exist.

His approach to kids, screens, and social media 1:03:03
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>> Okay, final question. Um I'm curious just about your screen time policy with your kids. I know you have three kids. Uh there's a lot of concern these days about Instagram not being great for people, not for kids. A lot of tech executives don't let their kids use devices while they're building the product. As head of Instagram, how do you think about screen time with your kids? >> The key thing for me is boundaries. Um it's also about education and being and having conversations with them. But my kids are too young to use social media.

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They're 10, eight, and six. Um but they each have an iPad. they get um they have to earn their time. Um so they have different ways they earn that time. It's usually about like sitting down to do your homework three times for half an hour each gets you a total of 90 minutes on the weekend and then they can use that time on the weekend. Um but you kind of have to set that boundary where it's like you can't just like you know it can't just be they ask for it and you give it to them. I think that matters a lot and then I'm pretty opinionated about what they do on it. Like I approve what apps that they have. I think parents should be approving what apps kids specifically are um downloading onto their devices.

1:04:15

We've been advocating for this at a policy level for a long time at Meta. I think those things help a lot. Um there are some exceptions. Um one is planes. It's just like about surviving. I don't know if you've ever for those of you are parents. >> I'm going to be Yeah. >> Yeah. It's like you just like that's just like all right you know we're fly you know it's a 10-hour flight or eight hour flight. It's like, yeah, just just you just need to get through it. Um, the other one that I'm starting to experiment with my 10-year-old with is so schools are interesting because I think I'm pretty supportive of a no phone in classrooms. Um, that's happening more and more. I think that's is probably good for education. And I do also know in the world of AI that there's concern about kids using AI and not learning critical thinking skills.

1:05:03

And I think that's a valid concern. But I also am worried about kids not learning how to leverage AI and then being sort of at a disadvantage. So that's a balance. So I think you need both. So with with my eldest, we started um vibe coding recently together. Um he's just loves video games. So I was like, "All right, let's make a video game." And so he's made this 19 level platformer game that kind of looks like an eight-bit version of Super Mario from when I was a kid. But like each level has its own theme, its own types of monsters. There's a store where you can buy different skins or weapons, and there's like uh like all it's unbelievable what a 10-year-old who still types with three fingers can do um with just, you know, a couple hours of sitting together. But that is more of like a I want you to learn how to um make things. I I want you to be thinking, not just playing games and I'm gonna sit with you and do we're going to

1:06:02

do this together. Um so to me, these are the things that matter. Boundaries um scoping it down to the activities you think are healthy for your kid. Every kid is different. U but I do think you want your kids to be digitally literate, um AI literate, because I think if they're not, they're going to be at a disadvantage. But it's you also don't want it to be a free-for-all. >> This is selfishly useful for me as a as a I have a three-year-old and I'm trying to figure all this stuff out. So, this is useful.

1:06:27

>> Oh, yeah. No, >> we need to figure out a strategy. >> It's amaz It's a thing. And you're you're you're not that far off. You're really just not that far off. It's going to happen in a couple years. >> Five coding next year. Let's do it. >> I couldn't believe I tried to do it six months ago and it just totally didn't work. And then >> now with newer models, it's been amazing. >> What's their platform of choice? Are they a clock coding team? uh person.

1:06:48

>> Yeah, my 10-year-old is using is using cloud code right now. Um >> um but um we will see. We'll see how that goes.

What Adam wants listeners to remember 1:06:56
1:06:56

>> Adam, uh I'm going to let you go. Thank you so much for being here. This you're just like such a gem of a person. It's just so obvious how clear like how authentic you are and just like how deeply you think about everything. Uh so I really appreciate you being here. >> I appreciate you bringing me on. Um been a fan for a long time. It's nice to finally get to have a conversation. >> I appreciate that. I really appreciate that. Uh let me just ask you this final question to ask everyone. What's a way that listeners can be useful to you?

1:07:23

>> I just think you don't even have to tell this to other people, but just remember that this world and technology is complicated and there are almost always tradeoffs. Um and you can totally disagree with the decisions I or we make. Um, but just remember that we are people here trying to make these decisions, trying to do the best we can. And I I actually do invite the criticism and the critique and the feedback, but um, but know that none of these contentious debates are nearly as simple as most people pretend to make them out to be.

1:07:59

>> Wise words, Adam, thank you so much for being here. >> Pleasure. Thank you, Lenny. >> Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennispodcast.com.

1:08:25

See you in the next episode.