Ever wondered why certain people are always at the top of your Instagram feed?
This week, Instagram invited reports to a press conference where they revealed the secrets behind their mysterious algorithm — shining a light on the reasons why we see what we see, and the order we see it in, on the popular picture app.
According to a report by
TechCrunch, there are three decisive factors when it comes to ordering your Instagram feed.
The first of these elements is
Interest, which is gauged by similar content and potentially machine vision analysing the actual content of the post. Machine vision is what it sounds like — a robot looking at your friend's photos and then recommending them to you.
The second factor is how
recently the post was shared, with prioritisation for timely posts over weeks-old ones.
The third factor is no surprise:
relationship. This is determined by how frequently you have interacted with another user in the past, by liking or commenting on their old posts.
However, the company also revealed that the more users you follow, the less likely you are to see posts by one specific person.
According to the same report, Instagram also claimed that it does not hide posts in the feed, and "you’ll see everything posted by everyone you follow if you keep scrolling."
