Instagram's head says engagement falls by half without the algorithm

Well, I have news for you. Social media creates nothing. It lives by getting us to not act... to sit in a mind-numbing silent purgatory, voyeuristically watching the fictitious 3rd-person accounts of the subjective experience of others... as the synchronisation of our genetic inner core with the paths we take in the social realm becoming less and less harmonious... since because of social media we take less paths... since you know... we don't act.

So if the addiction from the behavioural algorithms is all you have to engage with your users, why aren't you classed as drug suppliers?

Some people think this should all fall back on personal responsibility, but the way I see it, introducing highly addictive algorithms should've been regulated the same way adding addictive chemicals to food is.

Not if you unsubscribe from companies, brands, and publishers. You're welcome.

Only problem with algorithm is that it is prone to occasional slips where you open a random cat video (or any other bait) and your recommendations start showing that more often, you keep clicking those and before you know it your recommended feed is full of that.

But if you know how to tame the algorithm for only the content you are interested in, it is amazing. I like my twitter, youtube and insta recommendations and have discovered many new creators who I wouldn't have otherwise.

Snarky reaction aside, and actually reading the article, it says that the problem is something along the lines of "we incentivized and rewarded business accounts to post large volumes, so now if you switch to chronological order you will see more of these posts which reduces user satisfaction".

Well, that just means that the company will have to adapt before their users start unfollowing spammy accounts and the whole "influencer" business takes a hit. Though tbh, not sure how much of a hit it could take but hey, when instagram says engagement falls, I allow myself to feel optimistic for a brief moment.

Good?

I honestly only have these apps to see what my friends posted. I know they aren't likely to do it, but it would be lovely to have the friends-only view back by default in every meta app

Seems like a great outcome, right?

Falling by half sounds like a lot, but the glass-half-full read of that is that it means "Instagram would still be incredibly popular without its algorithm."

Its almost like... it was inherently designed to be as addictive as possible?

First I was incredibly surprised and frustrated that their search functionality is effectively nonexistent, then, when I gave up and scrolled, if I tapped on a post to look closer, I had to deal with it interrupting whatever I was listening to.

Then, cherry on top of the shit cake, they suspended my account unless I did some video ID process. Nope, not happening.

Instagram felt like a more invasive and hostile user experience than any social media I've used before.

https://narro.info

And what is the effect of this on the user?

Oh right, you don't care.

For me this guy is directly repsonsible of all the negative side effects of this attention grabbing engangement BS and he should go to jail for that.

You can't currently turn off the algorithm in Instagram.

This person is talking nonsense.

Just one example. It's odd to me that people are willing to put their own byline on obvious slop.

Engagement ~= addiction. Just a more euphemistic framing.

This guy thinks feeds will be dominated by brands posting multiple times per day. People will unsubscribe from brands that post what they don't want to see. It's a self correcting problem.