
How Instagram’s algorithm works - laurex
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/01/how-instagram-feed-works/
======
ivraatiems
Instagram'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.

~~~
toomanybeersies
My Instagram has turned into a National Geographic browser.

~~~
mkirklions
Mine 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.

~~~
munificent
The real question here is whether the algorithm is correctly reflecting your
interests or not. Are we our ego or our id?

~~~
fjsolwmv
Suppose my ranked preferences (by assertion, watch time, and also ad
interaction, and) of context mix may be 30% yoga, then 15% yoga, then 100%
yoga.

Suppose IG only offers 100% yoga or 10%, based on my click activity.

Ego and id may be fully compatible but it IG is still failing for my use case.

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emilsedgh
I 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
> 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.

~~~
Rjevski
These 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
You 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
> 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
The 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.

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werid
In 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?

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sparkzilla
This 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.

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gagabity
Wow, the article actually closes itself if you scroll too far down? What kind
of horrendous design is this?

~~~
Traubenfuchs
And 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.

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jannes
A 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
Learned 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.

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yakshaving_jgt
> 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
I 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
Thats 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.

------
NetOpWibby
Based on the comments on TC's piece, the article is bullshit.

~~~
overcast
If 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
I 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
See 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.

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mdrzn
Pretty much nothing in here is "news", every social media manager knows the
same things. I guess now it's just official.

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g105b
There is no news or even facts in this techcrunch article.

~~~
zodPod
But 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?

------
bootsz

      if(hasClickedOneImageOfASwimsuitModel) {
    
        fillEntireFeedWithPhotosOfButts();
    
      }

------
UweSchmidt
There 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
India.

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
In 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
Now fix the explore page

~~~
ct0
its nothing but stupid prank videos now

~~~
zodPod
They 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.

~~~
fjsolwmv
We humans do. I wish you humans luck.

~~~
zodPod
I was using that as a general population. You can be as proud as you want but
it doesn't stop the general population from letting these services walk all
over us.

