Online Presence & The Almighty Algorithm (Week 13)

-


Most of my time spent on the internet consists of surfing youtube for videos related to entrepreneurship, sales, or my latest obsession: Navy Seals. Of course the Youtube algorithm is always diligent in tracking all of my activity, and recommends me more videos that are similar to those I have recently viewed. I am sure we have all experienced this, and on the surface its a great thing. But if you think about it more carefully, its just as eerie as it is convenient. Many social media platforms have algorithms that function very similarly. Instagram is the social media platform that I spend the most time on. I am fairly active on the platform and have a following of 21,000 users. 95% of my followers (or more) I have never met in person. They support and chat with me through the screen, and I have built meaningful relationships with some of them despite the fact that we have never once met in person and most likely never will. This speaks to the fact that the internet is a strange, but highly beneficial place when it comes to connecting and building relationships with people who you would have never met otherwise.  Much like Youtube, the Instagram platform's user experience is highly dependent on its algorithm's ability to track user activity and recommend relevant content. The place where this is most visible is on Instagram's "Explore Page."

The Instagram Explore page is a section of Instagram that is separate from your news feed. It is the section of Instagram that shows you content from people you do not currently follow, but that Instagram thinks you might be interested in. If you want to know who Instagram "thinks" you are as a person, look no further than the Explore Page. The scary part is, you will find that they are shockingly accurate most of the time, and before you know it you will be neck-deep in posts that you enjoy or find interesting because the Instagram algorithm knows you so well. It knows your desires if you indulge in content related to them, and it knows your insecurities for the same reason. Sounds farfetched? Well then here's an exercise anyone can do that tests this theory: Choose a topic, and discipline yourself for one week to only view Instagram content related to that topic. Search out information related to that topic on Instagram, and make sure to interact with the content for a few moments every day until the week is complete. Then sit back and watch as Instagram floods your explore page entirely with content related to that topic, and floods your news feed with advertisements related to that topic. The results will be undeniable. The algorithm knows so much about us, but how much do we really know about it? Practically nothing. Yikes. Let that sink in for a moment. And after you do, try your best to resist the urge to deactivate your account immediately. Just kidding, but not really.

Links: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/11/how-youtubes-algorithm-really-works/575212/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Our Top Three Tips for Designing Your Home

-
Image
Calling all homeowners and do it yourselfers! Have you been thinking about sprucing up your home for a while but aren’t sure exactly how to go about it? Or maybe you’re a new home owner excited to design your new space, but you could use a little bit of direction. If so, you’re in the right place because we are going to be giving the top three tips on designing the interior of your home. Floor Plan and Spacing When it comes to designing a living space, getting the floor plan right is a must. A solid floor plan is the foundation for a great space, and is a fundamental aspect of interior design. Having a floor plan that works well in your home is all about spacing. You want to make sure that there is at least 45 centimeters between each piece in your space; this includes furniture like couches, coffee tables, and anything else that takes up a considerable amount of space. Putting together a functional and aesthetically pleasing floor pan can be more difficult than it sounds, so here’s a
Read more

Facebook and The Diffusion of Innovation Theory (Week 12)

-
Image
In this week's blog post we will be examining the social media giant, Facebook, through the lens of Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations theory. Facebook officially launched in February of 2004 and was primarily created by Mark Zuckerburg.  The purpose of the site was to provide a platform where Harvard students, exclusively, could connect with each other. Fast forward to 16 years in the future and Facebook is now a an absolute bohemoth that dominates the social media space with an estimated 2.5 billion users. Additionally the company has its hands in other industries as well, as the company has acquired additional assets such as Oculus Virtual Reality, and WhatsApp. How did a small platform that was created for Harvard students take over the world and change the way that humans interact on a global scale? More specifically, how does Facebook's rise fit within the Diffusion of Innovation theory that was laid out by Rogers? Those are the questions that this blog post w
Read more

The First Email Ever Sent (Week 7)

-
For this week's blogpost I will be writing about another technology on the Com Tech Timeline. The technological advancement that I am going to cover this week is "the first email sent". The first email ever sent was sent from one computer to another in a room in Cambridge Massachusetts. This email message was a test message, and was sent in 1971. The email message read, " QWERTYUIOP". The man who sent the email was Ray Tomlinson, a computer engineer who worked for a company called Bolt Beranek & Newman. Bolt Beranek and Newman was the company who created ARPANET. ARPANET was essentially the internet before the internet existed, as it was a system that consisted of a network of computers that were connected to one another. While working for Bolt and Beranek, Tomlinson had a side project that he was working on as well. He wanted to figure out how he could create a way for computer users to send messages or files to other computers. Up to that point, computers
Read more