Highlights
- Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has answered all the questions about how Instagram functions.
- Instagram is likely coming up with a series of blogs about everything you want to know about the photo-sharing app.
- Mosseri in a blog post debunked the myth that Instagram has one algorithm
Ever wondered why some posts get more likes than others? Why you are shown the kind of posts you are interested in? Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has answered all the questions you can possibly have about how Instagram functions. Instagram is likely coming up with a series of blogs about everything you want to know about the photo-sharing app. The first one answers questions like "How does Instagram decide what shows up for me first?"; "Why do some of my posts get more views than others?"; and "How does Instagram decide what to show me in Explore?"
Mosseri in a blog post debunked the myth that Instagram has one algorithm. We have often heard people talking about how certain things happen because of an app's algorithm. But Mosseri has now claimed that Instagram does not have one algorithm that oversees what people do and don't see on the app. The company uses a variety of algorithms, classifiers, and processes, each with its own purpose.
What Mosseri tries to say is that the app is divided into three parts including Feed, Explore, Reels, but each part has an algorithm of its own. "People tend to look for their closest friends in Stories, but they want to discover something entirely new in Explore. We rank things differently in different parts of the app, based on how people use them. We start by defining the set of things we plan to rank in the first place. With Feed and with Stories this is relatively simple; it's all the recent posts shared by the people you follow. There are a few exceptions, like ads, but the vast majority of what you see is shared by those you follow," Mosseri said in the blog.
While Instagram does include a variety of posts from people you follow and your close friends, it tries to avoid showing too many posts from the same person in a row.
Mosseri also highlighted the measures it takes to protect the accounts of users when someone tried to sabotage them. Instagram as we all know takes down posts immediately when it is against their community guidelines. If a user is a repeated offender and continues posting similar pictures, it might suspend your account.
Instagram does not take down posts that are flagged by fact-checkers, but it adds a label and show the post lower in Feed and Stories.