The rating system on Instagram has long been the subject of user scrutiny. The business outlines a handful of the criteria it uses to decide what users view.
Users of Instagram have long conjectured about how “the algorithm” ranks material on the network and explains why some users’ postings appear to be less prominent than others. Instagram is now disclosing more information about its recommendation algorithm in an effort to at least partially explain why you see particular posts.
The firm lays out its ranking methodology in a blog post according to the places where users will find content: the main feed, Stories, the Explore page, and Reels. There is not a single, all-knowing algorithm that determines what users will want to view and interact with; instead, businesses like Instagram employ a variety of data points to forecast consumer preferences. Unsurprisingly, it claims that a sizable amount of the information used to rate content originates directly from consumers.
For instance, the ranking of Stories depends on how frequently a person checks an account’s updates and if they engage with other users by sending DMs or like a Story. Instagram also tries to determine your relationship with an account, such as if they are a friend or relative.
Similar user data is gathered for reel suggestions; according to Instagram, what a person has liked, saved, shared, or engaged with will determine what they will see next. Instagram is a little clearer about how this works; the business expressly mentions user predictions for actions like resharing videos, watching them through to the end, like them, and clicking on the audio page. Ranking Reels also takes into account the quality of the video’s audio and visual components as well as details about the user who posted it, such as their number of followers or degree of interaction.
Users have a number of options through platforms to try to manage what they view. As a means for people to respond to certain sorts of information, Meta has added “show more” and “show less” choices to Facebook. Users of TikTok have the option to “dislike” videos and make a list of terms and hashtags they do not want to see in their feed.
The effectiveness of these tools, however, is debatable because some research have indicated that user settings to optimize a recommendation system hardly function at all.
