Everyone’s social media feed is different, but not every feed is a fun place to be around. How can you make your feed well and truly yours?
Social media is everywhere and aspects of our lives can depend on it, but one of the more frustrating bugbears so many of us have has to do with what we’re fed. More specifically, it’s how our feed appears.
It’s not just content from your friends and family, but a bunch of different aspects that appear in practically never-ending list of related pictures, videos, and people an online network believes you might like and want to watch, or more specifically can advertise and serve up to you regardless.
A feed isn’t just the things you want to see, but much of what you might not. It can be highly controlled and incredibly influential, helping to shape your day, week, or maybe just the moment you find yourself in. And much of it is thanks to the algorithm.
Specifically, it’s a set of rules applied to code, tweaked to how you use the app, service, or just simply the internet. Little changes you make, things you like, and the amount of time you spend simply glancing or skipping can determine how your algorithm is shaped, which becomes the rules that govern how your feed of information is populated.
There’s a little more to it than that, and much like how a publication (like a newspaper) can determine the views shown on its front page, so too can the company running the app. But by and large, an algorithm’s feed is determined by choices you make, and some of them are growing to let you make changes, as well.
TikTok, Threads, and Instagram have all started offering ways to help you make changes, albeit from little tweaks to the settings on your account. Meanwhile, services such as Bluesky offer the ability to see feeds that are specific to what you follow alongside a more varied algorithm-based option.
While not every social media system has an algorithm that will let you customise manually, there are still steps you can do to help make it happen. Ahead of the government’s planned opt-out approach to social media, you might want to make changes just in case it never happens, or get started asap.
Find what you want to consume
First up, because your feed is about the things you like, you may need to go looking for those things in the first place. As in search for the very items you like.
For instance, if you love cars and the Formula One, search for videos and content about that. If you’re a fan of fashion and reality TV, search for those topics, as well. And if you happen to love technology as much as this journalist, you may want that on your feed, and have your algorithm adapt accordingly.
Whatever app and service you happen to be using needs to get that information, which means you want to use the search function on those apps to check out and like some of it. This is one of the ways algorithms can glean and shape, though watching and consuming content, even seemingly at random, can help deliver the algorithmic changes you’re looking for.
Eventually, it will start working out related topics based on the likes of similar users, which is an algorithm’s way of trying to show you that you’re not alone, and you might like these topics, too.
But the starting point happens with your search, and can help deliver a more relevant feed based on your likes today.
Skip what you don’t
Conversely, it can also be helpful to skip what you don’t like, rather than hold onto a video out of sheer curiosity and hate.
The whole concept of “hate watching” can actually undermine our feeds, largely because when we hover over something or keep watching, it means we’re actually still somewhat engaged. Most services lack a “dislike” button, and it may not be all that effective: you can still dislike something and be engaged.
Instead, services take that viewing time as a metric to work out whether you’re interested, even if you’re not really interested.
The best way forward? When you find a piece of content you don’t like, instead of hovering over or waiting for it to improve, flick past it and move on. Your algorithm will thank you.
Use the controls
Finally, you need to use the controls that services provide. We’ve already said there’s no dislike button on some services, but there are like buttons, hearts, bookmarks, and comments.
Engaging helps shape an algorithm because it shows you are interested, rather than the passing curiosity you might have simply by waiting to see what happens. Both can be measured as an interaction, but the one showing you are genuinely interested may be more valuable. Though keep in mind that engagement isn’t the same thing as “approval”, which can be gauged more directly from likes and dislikes (if supported).
With services that actually offer a “not interested” button, you may want to actively press that to point out what you don’t want in your feed. It can help tell an algorithm what not to serve up, similar to how a junk or spam button shapes what lands in your email inbox.
There’s also a catch, because if you’ve had a service or account for a long period of time, you’ve probably also liked and bookmarked a bunch of things… and you mightn’t be that same person now.
Algorithms can be shaped over a long period of time, and that means the things you’ve liked, saved, and bookmarked for later may actually be working somewhat against you depending on what they are. A good example is music: if your kids have liked a whole bunch of kids tracks under your account, but you don’t want them there, you need to go back through and remove those likes and hearts to impact the algorithm accordingly.
These changes might make some difference, particularly over time. While a service and its programming still has the ultimate say at the end of the day, it can help reshape your algorithm so you’re not as frustrated by what appears. At least until an opt-out button really does materialise.
