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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.
Enjoy
As someone who constantly changes his FB feed to show the newest (because that's how I find the things I want to know about), I would like to say that it's a giant pain in the ass and that all of the corporations who think they know better than I as to what I want to see and when need to take a long walk off a short pier so they can go soak their head.
What you are doing is not "curation", it is propaganda. I, for one, am tired of it. And far sooner than you think, this will lose whatever effectiveness it once had. People have a way of becoming immune to it's influence. Learn from Mad Men. You have one chance to change people's minds. Don't squander it on the flavor of the month.
...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....
What if the posts that matter to me, personally, the most are the newest.
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Why doesn't fb's super special algorithm pick that up? Why, when I tell it that I want to see newest posts first (MULTIPLE TIMES!!!), it constantly overrides that directive and shows me stuff in what appears to me to be random order?
Ah.
Like Facebook.
When I constantly switch the fucker back to "Most Recent" and it keeps fucking forgetting.
Oh, well, another site to avoid because of a stupid change to how it works that wasn't thought through.
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!?
I'd moderate this down for you if i had points.
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
Why do these social media companies insist on telling me what I want and like to see when I visit the site?
How else are they going to get you to see, hear, think about and want the things their *actual* customers (advertisers) want to you to see, hear, think about and want? How else are they going to drive social, political and economic issues to their liking?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
This is not a kindly little old service that helps you find things that are important to you.
This is an extremely malicious program to shape your point of view by enticing you with items that are scientifically proven to stimulate you and then associating those items with other items that promote an agenda that is against your interests.
This is literally some faceless entity telling you to your face that it has the power to decide what you like and that you will agree.
What is to stop them from inserting suggestive material into your feed? How can you account for the affect such things would have on your point of view?
Self awareness and thoughtless stimulation cannot exist together. Guess which one helps you get what you want and need out of life in the long run?
Not that this specific change in this specific service is particularly important, but it is a clear sign of what role the internet plays in most peoples' lives.