✖ oh hello there, you evil little Instagram algorithm

✖ oh hello there, you evil little Instagram algorithm

• Wednesday 12 June 2019

There has been a lot of talk about the Instagram algorithm as long as I can remember. When I first created my Instagram account, it was talked about then and until this very day it has been talked about, perhaps even more. Is there really a way of beating Instagram algorithm in 2019?

Recently, I've been struggling with a little writer's block and when I asked around of what I should write about and went through unhealthy amounts of stats, I ended up on writing Instagram again. Also, "you should write something about Instagram as I haven't seen a person who knows about it as much as you do", so here we go again.

✖ what is an algorithm?
At first, you should know what the algorithm actually is. And algorithms are pretty effin' tricky things.

"In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an unambiguous specification of how to solve a class of problems. Algorithms can perform calculation, data processing, automated reasoning and other tasks."

The definition was brought here to you from Wikipedia's wonderful world. There are multiple different algorithms that can be created for different purposes. The one on Instagram basically works based on your own actions in the app. It's also designed to get the user to spend more time in the app itself.

The algorithm on Instagram is created to learn based on the user's actions in the app. It process data, on how you behave in the app. How much time you spend in it, what you are doing during that time you spend there and based on that it shows you the content first that it thinks you're most interested in.

You might've heard someone say that "Instagram isn't showing my posts to anyone". That actually isn't true itself and the better wording for the sentence could be "Instagram doesn't think my posts are relevant to my followers, which leads me to be at the bottom of your main feeds."
In reality, you can see all posts from the past two days in your main feed, but if you're following thousands of people you might not have the energy to scroll at the very bottom, where the posts that algorithm thinks that aren't relevant to you are.

And since the Instagram algorithm is learning constantly to curate the content of the app for something that is perfect to a small hand of users, the creator of the algorithm has very little control over on how it works. It's just something that runs on the background, and I don't think it should be blamed completely.

Since the Instagram algorithm is constantly learning to curate the content of the app for its users, the creator of the algorithm has very little control over on how it works.

This is something that I want people to understand. It's not the fault of the person who has created the algorithm, as the algorithm itself is genius. The algorithm itself learns along the way and when the computer is doing all the work, it can be a bit tacky at times. Because well, like humans, computers as well do their fair share of mistakes. And then they will learn for them.

I've seen a lot of tweets on blaming the creators of the algorithms and the thing is, it's not entirely their fault. They've simply just given the basics for the computer on how to solve a problem x and given them the possibility to learn how to find new solutions on solving different problems. If you were up to do some minor changes on how it works, you should create the whole damn thing from the beginning.

✖ so how does the Instagram algorithm affect?
I'll break it down for you, as a form of a list.

✖ it is constantly learning based on your behaviour in the app
✖ it is designed to show you the content that is most relevant to you

Yeah, that's it.

Let's say you're following roughly 200 people on Instagram. You can get to the bottom of your main feed multiple times a day, and are able to see all their Instagram stories throughout the day. You've seen it all they've posted during the past two days.

Let's say you follow over 1000 people on Instagram. You might not see all the people's posts, but is it because you don't have the time to scroll at the bottom of the feed? Instagram is showing the posts of the people you're following from the past two days. If you follow over thousands of people, it's very likely that there are people who are posting multiple times a day, which gives you the impression you won't see anyone else posting on Instagram but the handful of people who dump three pictures in their feeds per day.

And that is my friends when the "it's designed to show you the content that is most relevant to you" becomes in the play. If you're more likely to like and engage with the people who post multiple times a day, of course, the algorithm will show their posts to you first. If you're more likely to interact or engage to same people's posts all over and over again, the algorithm will show their posts to you first. Because the information that you have given to it is that you seem to really enjoy the account's x content. You actually enjoy it so much, that you're most likely to interact with it so it learns that it must be something that is really relevant to you.

If you don't engage with anything, it simply guesses what could be most relevant to you and shows it up at the top of your main feed.

✖ is beating the Instagram algorithm actually possible?
Why would we want to beat something we could try to learn to use in our advantage?
This is going to be one of those posts where the writer isn't going to provide you with any actual ways on beating the algorithm but based on what you've just learned from simply reading this post, is there anything you could use in changing your future behaviour inside the app? If the flipping algorithm can learn things very efficiently, why couldn't we? Oh right, it's too much work for us. Why work for something you really want?

Why beat it, when you can trick it by simply changing your own behaviour?

Why wouldn't we, instead of complaining about something that simply isn't our hands (nor really the developer, to be fair) would actually try and engage with like-minded people? Create a community? Work for creating engaging captions, engaging content?

That's why follow loops, comment pods, giveaway loops, follow/unfollow game and mass liking doesn't really work. It doesn't make your content more engaging. And the more engaging your content is, more likely people will engage in it. And the more engagement the posts receives, the more relevant the algorithm believes it is to more people, and that's when you start reaching the accounts who don't even follow you by simply ending up to a search page's suggestions.