![]() Unsurprisingly, this is remarkably US-West Coast-centric. As a result, the algorithmically curated feeds now show what’s currently popular to the home base where the majority of the algorithm’s code is written. That human interaction reflects the biases of the creator – it must, because it’s impossible for any of us to be entirely objective or even objective relative to a larger audience. But since we’re not at the point of programs sentient enough to determine if we find something wildly different interesting or not (or at least controversial enough to drive viewership) there still has to be human interaction in the coding. You can’t keep showing the same stuff again and again even if it’s popular the algorithm must allow for some genetic diversification to avoid the visual equivalent of inbreeding. They have to: again, to maintain popularity, relevancy and ultimately user base (necessary to justify ad rates to corporate spenders) – you have to keep the content diverse enough to grow the audience. Beyonce probably doesn’t pay to have her posts promoted, and they’re probably promoted automatically over somebody in the 10-20k range that is paying. In short: if you’re big enough, they need you. by simple virtue of having a large incumbent audience – then it’s going to be algorithmically preserved and perpetuated for being popular. Similarly, entities that were around in the early days and as a result have large critical mass that predates the tithing formula will continue to dominate because they have enough interaction to be deemed ‘mission critical’ – any social media platform is only as good as the value of its content, and if content has a lot of followers/ likes/ shares etc. ![]() Nobody is paying to promote this it’s just an artefact of the machine. To prevent every feed being dominated by shallow DOF photographs of cats, coffee, bearded men and girls in bikinis, some of the algorithm is weighted towards the individual user’s preferences – I probably get more watches and cars and leathergoods in my feed than the average person, but there’s still a hell of a lot of cats, too. Some code determines what is popular by what gets interacted with which in turn determines what is shown (pattern recognition plays a big part here, as do hashtags, trending key words or phrases, locations, interactions and such) and in turn what is interacted with…I think it’s pretty clear to see this is a self reinforcing cycle that can quickly become asymptotic. The more problematic reason is algorithmic. The difference? probably isn’t big enough for FB/IG to deem worthy of bleeding yet. The average post for the watch company has 3000-4000 views from 5,000 or so followers that’s a viewership from 60-80%, leading to 150-250 likes, more comments, and an interaction rate of 4-8%, which is again in the same ballpark. But: viewership is barely in the low teens. But note % of likes ranges from 2-10%, which is about what you’d expect depending on content. Of that, there’s maybe 30-100 likes and a comment or two that’s a pretty dire interaction rate. It’s seen in the statistics for my posts on FB and IG: for example, the average post for the individual might get between 1000-1500 views or less over its lifetime, from between 8,500 and 14,000 followers, depending on the platform. This has personally happened to me for over a year now a lot of people I know are surprised I’m still posting (and at the usual frequency). ![]() The simplest reason is a mercenary one: the entity you have subscribed to has been deemed large enough by the social media companies to be bled and tithed until they cough up, their work will not be shown or barely drip-fed to let their followers and customers know the company is just about alive, but barely on life support. ![]() It isn’t because they haven’t been making content, it’s much more sinister than that. This has been verified by several people and a simulation account I set up and subscribed to several sources sure enough, at the start, you see a lot of posts from your ‘new friend’, but not long after – they virtually disappear. Only a small portion of the total population of posts or images published by people you follow actually shows up on your feed. It has nothing to do with whether you subscribed to my feeds or not. The alarmist and provocative title are deliberate attempts to play the game (explained further on). It’s a silent protest against the fact that whether this link and thus its contents get disseminated to people who subscribe to my social media feeds (FB, IG, Twitter) and read or not is almost entirely down to some self-curating algorithms. First things first: there’s no image of any sort in this post, which is rare for me. ![]()
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