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Whether it’s Facebook’s News Feed or TikTok’s For You page, social media algorithms are constantly making behind-the-scenes decisions to boost certain content – giving rise to the “curated” feeds we’ve all become accustomed to.
But does anyone actually know how these algorithms work? And, more importantly, is there a way to “game” them to see more of the content you want?
Optimising for engagement
In broader computing terms, an algorithm is simply a set of rules that specifies a particular computational procedure.
In a social media context, algorithms (specifically “recommender algorithms”) determine everything from what you’re likely to read, to whom you’re likely to follow, to whether a specific post appears in front of you.
Their main goal is to sustain your attention for as long as possible, in a process called “optimising for engagement”. The more you engage with content on a platform, the more effectively that platform can commodify your attention and target you with ads: its main revenue source.
One of the earliest social media feed algorithms came from Facebook in the mid-2000s. It can be summarised in one sentence:
Sort all of the user’s friend updates – including photos, statuses and more – in reverse chronological order (newer posts first).
Since then, algorithms have become much more powerful and nuanced. They now take myriad factors into consideration to determine how content is promoted. For instance, Twitter’s “For You” recommendation algorithm is based on a neural network that uses about 48 million parameters!
A black box
Imagine a hypothetical user named Basil who follows users and pages that primarily discuss space, dog memes and cooking. Social media algorithms might give Basil recommendations for T-shirts featuring puppies dressed as astronauts.
Although this might seem simple, algorithms are typically “black boxes” that have their inner workings hidden. It’s in the interests…
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