Taming the Algo Beast

Algorithm, algorithm, algorithm. At least every social media influencer thinks about this "thing" regularly and how best they can make it work in their favor—for their content and, well, influence. Hardly did I ever think I should be concerned about it while I am not actively putting out content... until recently when I had to wrestle with it.

The battle for attention is crazy. Every social media app is designed and continually optimized to get as much of its user's attention as possible. So the algorithms are tuned to feed you what they think you really want. Nice and cool. The problem now is that it's not right all the time and more concerning, sometimes persuasive. Kind of makes sense, maybe, but I had never met one such as X.

Firstly, have you noticed how you somehow cannot do much on some social platforms without an account? LinkedIn, X, and a couple of them. So when I search for something just out of curiosity and not necessarily in line with what I truly have the most interest in, the algorithm thinks otherwise. These platforms behave differently, however, and it's actually interesting how so.

When I search for something on YouTube and watch, say, one video based on that search, something similar is going to pop up later on my feed. Usually it's just one. Should I interact with that suggestion on my feed, the algorithm begins to think to itself, "Seems Jay's interested in hydrogen-engine-powered robot dogs." And then I begin to see more of it. But if I stop interacting with its suggestions based on that, it would likely not bother me for a while.

It's a little worse on IG. My For You page is easily populated with anything. I hadn't been intentional with my For You feed, then it became messy with things that I really didn't care about. I had to clean it up. So for every video I wasn't interested in, I chose the option, "Not interested in this post." Quickly enough, my feed was all cleared and looking much better.

I think my X page was the worst of all. I could never feel productive going through my For You feed, as I'd soon be distracted by "other things," so I was going to clean it up like IG when I finally grew very frustrated. That's when I learned that X has a very aggressive algorithm. Having tagged over 50 posts as "Not interested," I refreshed my feed only to find that exact same thing I'm not interested in pop up first. I tried again, and again, and yet again to no avail. At this point, I was already mad.

Leaving X is always an option. Would only take that when I'm actively detoxing from social media. This time, I wanted the algorithm to serve me right and not the other way around. So I said to myself, "Two can play this game. Let's both be aggressive, then."

I made a list of people whose content I genuinely want to see more of and followed them all. Then I interacted with some of their most recent posts -- liking, reblogging some, and replying to a few. Then in my search, I just thought of random topics in my fields of interest and went through them there. Then finally, I refreshed my age to see improvements. The algo was now learning what I wanted it to focus on for me.

This process took way longer than I would have liked, but I consider it a productive use of time. It was about time anyway. Funny, I now carefully treat my what I feed the algorithm learns about my interests because it matters for my attention and how I spend it.