ou scroll: through your Insta ‘Explore’ Page. You see a wall of videos of the cutest kittens - yesterday you shared a story of a cute cat the snow. You open TikTok's ‘For You Page’ (FYP). You see video after video of people making cookies. Last week you posted a video of yourself Scoffing: a giant cookie. You scroll through Twitter. It suggests accounts to follow. They are all Chelsea supporters. Guess what? That's your favourite team! What's happening? How do social media sites know you so well? The answer is in the algorithm. CURRENT explains ... An algo-what? What is an algorithm? = One billion videos are viewed on TikTok every day. + 995 photos are uploaded on Instagram every second. * And on Snapchat, 225 million snaps are created daily. It's a mind-blowing® amount of content. ‘And yet these social networks always ‘seem to know exactly what to show you. How? This is the result of the algorithm —a set of complex instructions or code that collects and sorts information. TikTok defines its ‘For you page’ (FYP) algorithm as “a stream of videos curated to your interests, making it easy to find content and creators you love ...” Imagine going toa restaurant that served. ‘every type of food in the world. How would you ever know what ‘to choose? An algorithm acts as a siove®. It filters the Soe By ae catia eee, ‘serves you something ‘you are most likely to enjoy. How does a social media algorithm work? ‘The algorithm tracks® and saves data about you to create a user profile. ‘This data includes: ‘= Your device and settings: the phone, computer or tablet you are using, your language, and which country you are in. + Your interactions: every ‘like’ you give, every piece of content you post and every comment you make. * Your preferences: the videos you linger® over, the videos you choose to ‘watch and the videos you rewatch. It also notes the music, captions and hashtags used in the video clip. ‘This information allows the algorithm to select the most relevante content for you. Why do social media sites use algorithms? ‘The answer is simple. To keep you hookede! Each social media network hhas one key aim: user engagement. In other words, they want you to stay online and to keep watching, posting, creating and commenting. But algorithms are also deployed* to make ‘money too. Social media sites are a powerful marketing tool; the more they earn about you, the more they learn about the products and services you ‘are interested in, “The TikTok algorithm is able to find the biece of content you're most Vulnerable’ to ...” Guillaume Chaslot, Algotransparency Seventy-three per cent of U.S. teens say that Instagram is the best way for brands to reach out with new products, Brands pay social media ‘networks to show the adverts on your feed that you are most likely to respond to. This is how social media platforms make vast sums of money and why they are free to use, >> REET January /Fobruary 2022 OS