[capableweb]

That was my first idea too! Not that people suck (not sure why you must suck if you enjoy looking at good-looking people), but that it's organic. Instagram just prioritizes what people click on, and people are attracted to attractive people, so they click on that.

[waterhouse]

Follow-up questions:

- Does Instagram prioritize scantily-clad photos of attractive people over scantily-clad photos of relatively less-attractive people?

- Is the prioritization based on a machine analysis of the photo, or on the response of earlier users to the photo?

- "While [the skew towards nudity] was consistent and apparent for most volunteers, a small minority were served posts that better reflected the diversity published by content creators." Are the majority people who have clicked on plenty of attractive scantily-clad photos? Are the minority people who have been presented with such and avoided clicking them?

[toyg]

> Is the prioritization based on a machine analysis of the photo, or on the response of earlier users to the photo?

I would bet the latter. Why go to the trouble of analysing difficult stuff about body structure, when you can just let users "decide".

I think we should formulate a law, something like "every internet imageboard, if left to user-moderation, will eventually turn into pr0n".

[n_kb]

It's likely that FB uses user response to posts to decide how to prioritize them. However, several patents describe systems where they analyze (using CV) and make decision on the importance of pictures before they are published.

[disgruntledphd2]

Remember kids, just because a Megacorp has a patent on something, doesn't imply that they are using an approach like this anywhere in production.

[n_kb]

We didn't have enough data to test these hypotheses. If more people contribute their data, we'll be able to test that: https://algorithmwatch.org/en/instagram-algorithm/

[capableweb]

> - Does Instagram prioritize scantily-clad photos of attractive people over scantily-clad photos of relatively less-attractive people?

If my theory of "It's not Instagram that prioritizes attractive people, people prioritize attractive people" is right, then yes, less attractive people are less attractive and therefore less prioritized.