Slashdot Mirror
Instagram's New Algorithm That Puts the Best Posts First Goes Live For All (instagram.com)
Instagram announced on Friday that it is rolling out its algorithmic feed around the world. The idea is, Facebook-owned photo and video platform says, users will see photos that they are likely to enjoy -- as opposed to seeing what people they follow have posted in reverse-chronological order. The algorithm uses machine learning to create a more personalized feed based on what it thinks you will enjoy more. TechCrunch reports: If you think that sounds a lot like parent company Facebook's News Feed algorithm, you'd be right. As Facebook came to understand long ago, the posts people want to see aren't necessarily those that are the newest. They're those that matter to you, personally. But since most of us aren't on our phones 24/7 -- hey, even the busiest people sleep for a few hours per night! -- we tend to miss posts from our favorite people. This is especially true if you're trying to keep up with friends in other time zones.
Since this change went into effect, my company's reach on Instagram has been cut in half. I guess we're just not all that interesting anymore according to their algorithm compared to how interesting we were before to the people that actually saw our content!?
If the stuff you're seeing is sorted in reverse chronological order, you can browse through it up to the point where you last browsed through it. Then you're done becomes you know you've already seen everything that comes after.
If the stuff you're seeing is sorted in whatever way some mysterious algorithm thinks you'll find it interesting, you can't stop browsing. An interesting thing that you haven't seen before may be just one more page scroll down, buried among stuff you've already seen. This is like counting marbles by pulling one out of the bag, writing a number, throwing it back into the bag, and pulling out another marble. It's extraordinarily inefficient at finding all the unnumbered marbles, and guarantees you can never know if you've counted them all.
And what happens if you run across something you really do find interesting, but you have to put your phone down to do other stuff. And between then and the next time you're able to browse the algorithm has updated what it thinks your preferences are? You can't reproduce the previous sort order. So now it's like a magazine, where the pages can randomly rearrange their order while you're in the middle of browsing through it.