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by manigandham 2198 days ago
This seems rather thin on describing the feeds that these users are following. How "diverse" are they? What's that even mean? Did they check which posts are getting the most interactions (by their other followers)?

Unless these posts are completely new, how can they know that this isn't Instagram prioritizing the posts that already have the most engagement organically?

1 comments

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/
That's a major missing hypothesis that seriously undermines your conclusion.

Why do you need me to share data at all? Just create brand new accounts and test what they see in a more controlled manner. Then you'll be able to test what's recommended from the same accounts over time while building any specific profiles yourself.

That's against FB's and IG's terms of service, so as an investigative outlet, they can't really do that and then promote the results.