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How Instagram’s algorithm works
- pxndxx 8y agoIf they don't explain how they calculate interest they aren't explaining anything...
- mdrzn 8y agoPretty much nothing in here is "news", every social media manager knows the same things. I guess now it's just official.
- emilsedgh 8y agoI prefer it to show me things I hadn't seen since the last time I visited, in chronological order. Close to what Slack does and shows you a _New Messages_ indicator. With that being said, in case of Instagram Im kind-of OK with it as it's just pictures. In case of Twitter, if I was a product manager, I'd file a bug report with highest priority. The kind of bug that developers would not sleep until it's fixed. I get a series of tweets about an ongoing event in a random order. It's like watching a goddamn movie with scenes shuffled randomly. It makes no sense.
- vk23 8y ago> It's like watching a goddamn movie with scenes shuffled randomly. It makes no sense. Have you seen Memento? Jokes aside I never understood why twitter does not allow the user to choose the sort order of the feed. This is a reoccuring theme for social networks (facebook feed, youtube subscriptions etc) so I guess there is some kind of motivation behind it.
- setr 8y agoI imagine the motivation as 1. There's an inherent belief that they know what you want better than you do (this is inherit in any recommendation engine that gives limited ability to manipulate it) 2. Most users, given the option, won't bother changing it anyways 3. You'll use the service regardless of whether they offer it, because network effects
- vk23 8y ago1 and maximizing time spend in the app (see sibling comment) seem like a good explaination for this. I'm not sure about 2 but it might be true aswell. > 3. You'll use the service regardless of whether they offer it, because network effects Actually I stopped using Facebook for that reason. The feed just didnt provide any value to me anymore. Also I never really got into Twitter because of it. I don't see the value in following people if I cannot see their posts without hours of scrolling through retweets.
- lbotos 8y ago> There's an inherent belief that they know what you want better than you do I think it's actually that they believe they can create an algorithm that will keep you coming back. It clearly works. People want to be entertained, often by their friends, often by things that interest then. This algorithm based on _your input_. You can absolutely manipulate the feed. Search for 12 yoga based people, click on 12 yoga based hashtags, and then watch your feed become yoga-ified for the next few days as the algo adjusts to keep you coming back.
- setr 8y ago>This algorithm based on _your input_. You can absolutely manipulate the feed. You can incidentally manipulate the feed. But its clearly not intentional behavior; the recommender system naturally operates on the belief that you're using the services without considering the recommender system. You can manipulate the system to something specific by breaking that assumption, but all you've done is essentially exploit a bug. Its clearly not a feature. And in a perfect world, the recommendation system would realize you're lying to it, and discard that behavior, and serve you what you really want. your input is expected to be natural consumption of the service, with limited, abstracted forms of feedback, but otherwise without knowledge of the recommender system judging your every move. You don't edit the results, you don't play with ordering, you ideally don't even search too much out of your defined subject range (lest it skew horribly and fuck up all your recommendations, like your yoga example). >I think it's actually that they believe they can create an algorithm that will keep you coming back. It clearly works. But this I agree with; it's a better understanding of what I was trying to get at.
- Rjevski 8y agoThese services want to show you cancer - sorry I mean ads - as much as possible, and for that they want you to stay on the app as long as possible. With a sane chronological feed, once you scroll down to the last tweet you remember reading, you know you’re done and can leave the app and do productive things. With a bullshit “algorithmic” feed, you never know when you’ve caught up, and the “fear of missing out” will make you stay there scrolling way longer just in case there’s one tweet somewhere down there you haven’t seen yet - this gives them the opportunity to show you more cancer.
- joncrane 8y agoYou nailed it. When a company lives or dies by advertising revenue, they are going to optimize for maximum advertising revenue. The pattern with TV is a good case study. I wonder if there will eventually be guidelines about how many ads you can show users and now much screen real estate is allowed to be covered by ads.
- r3bl 8y ago> I wonder if there will eventually be guidelines about how many ads you can show users and now much screen real estate is allowed to be covered by ads. Isn't that kind of what "acceptable ads" programs in adblocks are? (Or, at least, should be?) There are a lot of Adblock Plus users there that basically decided (or got tricked into thinking) that ads that are appropriate are okay to view.
- Rjevski 8y agoThe issue with "acceptable" ads is that 1) there is no such thing as "acceptable" shit, and 2) the "acceptable" ads are just as bad (if not worse) than everyone else as far as privacy & stalking are concerned.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoEven if they limit to a reasonable 10% ads or whatever, they'll still manipulate ad sacrifice content quality to maximize total engagement time/content.
- opencl 8y agoTwitter does allow choosing this though. Untick "Show the best Tweets first" in settings and you will get reverse chronological order back.
- brann0 8y agoWhat's the deal with devs not going to sleep? That's unhealthy.
- yakshaving_jgt 8y ago> Shadowbanning is not a real thing, and Instagram says it doesn’t hide people’s content for posting too many hashtags or taking other actions. Would they admit it exists in either case?
- Maarten88 8y agoI was wondering how they know it is not a real thing: they use machine learning, they feed the content with all metadata in and then let some trained AI logic filter/prioritize it. If the learning algorithm has found that most people don't 'engage' with content from certain people, or with a certain type of content, it might filter it without being intentionally being programmed in, right?
- setr 8y agoThats not really the same as shadowbanning though is it? What you've described isn't much different than you posting with few to no followers; its just being further enforced by the recommendation engine. But ultimately, hopefully, its still a reflection of the community's taste, and not the administration. Shadowbanning is more of an explicit denial of the community taken by someone who doesn't represent the community, but rather the hosting service itself. It might align with community taste, but also might not.
- jeromegv 8y agoI think what people have said about shadowbanning in the past was not that your post were hidden from your followers feed but more than your post would not be visible within the hashtag section. So let's say you keep spamming your posts with 30 unrelevant hashtags, instagram would stop showing your post within the hashtag page. Instagram didn't explicitly say it was not happening and they could make a case that it isn't the true definition of shadow banning. But it seems that many people have observed this behavior in the past.
- okmokmz 8y ago> not that your post were hidden from your followers feed but more than your post would not be visible within the hashtag section I had an account that was shadowbanned, or at least seemed to be, and I was able to confirm that my posts didn't show up under hashtags or in followers feeds. In order to see my posts you had to manually navigate to my page, which caused my likes to drop to less than 5 per post
- NetOpWibby 8y agoBased on the comments on TC's piece, the article is bullshit.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- overcast 8y agoIf you do any type of real work on Instagram, most of this article is completely inaccurate. Everyone has reported getting far less engagement after the changes. I've more than doubled followers since recent changes, and my engagement is roughly half what it was. Reach is WAY down, and it's directly affecting it. This is a niche localized account, with real followers. No garbage.
- jeromegv 8y agoI do work on instagram and yes engagement has been down. But they just said in the article that they prioritize posts with people you DM, people you comment and people you have been tagged with (ie: your actual real life friends). So this would explain the drop in engagement. Also have to keep in mind the platform has already more than doubled in users since the algo changes, that means people follow more people and this also dilutes your importance in someone's feed if they now follow twice as many people. I think this means they prioritize people within your close circle above brand that try to engage with thousand of followers.
- jeromegv 8y agoSee quote on this article: Instagram’s main goal is to help you see content from your “friends and family,” and with the algorithm they say that people now see 90% of posts from their friends and family, instead of 50% when it was the chronological feed. https://later.com/blog/instagram-algorithm-update/ https://later.com/blog/instagram-algorithm-update/ That means that if you're not friend or family, you are being seen less.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
- g105b 8y agoThere is no news or even facts in this techcrunch article.
- zodPod 8y agoBut you get to experience their horrendous design! Isn't it great how the final paragraph is harder to read because the page removes the contrast? Or how, when you scroll a little too far, the old page disappears completely?
- werid 8y agoIn the app, if I start by watching a bunch of stories... it'll refresh the main feed when I go out of stories, but I haven't even scrolled down to see those posts yet. With a "random" feed, it makes it real hard to find out what you just missed. This is the best they could come up?
- gagabity 8y agoWow, the article actually closes itself if you scroll too far down? What kind of horrendous design is this?
- Traubenfuchs 8y agoAnd you can't even scroll back, potentially being baffled why the website malfunctioned and loaded a new page. It's like a bad UX pattern parody.
- jeffmould 8y agoThe new Techcrunch design is horrible. I stopped reading it entirely because of this design. It is flaky and jumps around leaving you confused if you aren't paying attention.
- r3bl 8y agoNot only that, but it only closes itself if you scroll too fast, thinking that you're not interested in that specific article you've clicked on. Best example of trying to over-optimize a site I can think of.
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
- ivraatiems 8y agoInstagram's algorithmic feed is hot garbage. I went through a two week period where it would ONLY show posts from three or four of the ~2,000 accounts I follow. Those accounts also happened to belong to big-ish companies, compared to most others I'm following, which are individuals or small organizations. It got so bad I had to unfollow them just to get any other content in my feed. And because I can't trust the feed, I keep a mental list of accounts (maybe 5-6) to "check on" manually for content, which is way more work than I should have to spend on a photo-sharing app. If I could switch back to chronological feeds, in exchange for double the ads or something, I'd do it. It'd waste less of my time. Also, Instagram banned me from following via the app for about five months with no communication or explanation. I think it thought I was a bot, but can't be sure. Not the customer but the product, indeed.
- pavel_lishin 8y ago> And because I can't trust the feed, I keep a mental list of accounts (maybe 5-6) to "check on" manually for content, which is way more work than I should have to spend on a photo-sharing app. I use a third-party app for Twitter, since they've abandoned any relationship with chronological reality, but even so I keep a separate list of people whose tweets I absolutely don't want to miss that I check every few days. Gosh, I miss RSS.
- htor 8y agorss is alive and well! why did you stop using it?
- toomanybeersies 8y agoMy Instagram has turned into a National Geographic browser.
- mkirklions 8y agoMine has turned into hot girls and yoga. You click on 1 too many photos of a girls chest popping out of her shirt and you lose control of your IG.
- jannes 8y agoA huge part of why they introduced an algorithmic feed is probably to sell user engagement instead of giving it away for free. Prioritising actual people means that they de-prioritise businesses, who now have to pay to get to previous levels of user engagement.
- mkirklions 8y agoLearned that lesson from Facebook. Tried to pay a marketing company to grow my website. Instead they flaked after turning my page into a business page. I get 100 people instead of 400 people seeing my posts. And then I stopped using facebook completely. If facebook is only going to show my political garbage shares and they wont show my website? Theres 0 value from facebook.
- sparkzilla 8y agoThis reminds me of Facebook's claim, when it introduced its algorithmic feed, that it was all for the benefit of the average person, who would benefit because (they said) a person with 300 friends would be having trouble managing 1500 posts a day. This was a lie manufactured by Facebook to sell the algorithmic feed to journalists, who passed it on as truth to their readers. First of all it was misleading: people with 300 or even 500 friends have nowhere newer 1500 posts a day. Sure, some friends post 10 memes a day, but most people do not post anything at all. In any case, I did not hear anyone complaining that they had to deal with too many posts, and managing the feed wasn't an issue. No-one was complaining about the chronological feed before, What was an issue, however, was that Facebook (and now Instagram - also owned by Facebook) needed to make more money. So they created an algorithmic feed that pushed posts that engaged people more to keep people on the platform. I suspect this is exactly the same tactic, by the same people, backed up by the same compliant media, that we have seen before.
- UweSchmidt 8y agoThere are companies that approach instagrammers and promise increased exposure of posts within that account's followers - and it seems to work. Anyone know how they do it?
- mkirklions 8y agoIndia. I saw some model with 1.1m followers. Went to her website page + looked it up in alexa.siteinfo 1.1M followers, top 11m website, most traffic coming from India. So basically a fake instagram. I think this is extremely true and there are a few real users that make it all worth it.
- UweSchmidt 8y agoIn this case the instagrammer didn't get any new followers, somehow he just got more exposure among his own, real followers. The instagrammer did not know now how they did it, he said he just posted a normal photo. Thanks for mentioning alexa siteinfo, didn't know they track individual ig profiles.
- dqoo 8y agoNow fix the explore page
- ct0 8y agoits nothing but stupid prank videos now
- gnarcoregrizz 8y agoSame as reddit's new front page, hah
- zodPod 8y agoThey don't even seem to change. It's all just like a small group of "influencers" posting the same shit constantly. This is why social media is slowly making itself irrelevant. I just wish we humans had the self control to stop doing it once we realized it's not adding value.
- bootsz 8y agoif(hasClickedOneImageOfASwimsuitModel) { fillEntireFeedWithPhotosOfButts(); }