Instagram CEO explains how the app recommends the content you see

“There are a lot of misconceptions out there, and we recognize that we can do more to help people, especially creators, understand what we do. Today, we’re updating our original post to shed more light on how ranking works across Instagram and share some new features we’ve built in response to feedback from creators that help improve the experiences people have across the app overall,” reads the blog’s first few lines.

Mosseri states that Instagram doesn’t have a singular algorithm that oversees what people do and don’t see on the app. Instead, it uses a variety of algorithms, classifiers, and processes.

How are posts ranked in your Instagram feed?

The CEO explains that Feed is a user’s personalized home base, having a mix of content from the accounts they have chosen to follow, recommended content from accounts Instagram think he/she may enjoy and ads. 

“We start by defining the set of things we plan to rank in the first place. With Feed we consider recent posts shared by the people you follow, as well as posts from accounts you don’t already follow that we think you might be interested in. We determine what you might be interested in based on a variety of factors, including what and whom you’ve followed, liked or engaged with recently. We personalize the experience for you to try to strike a balance between content from accounts you follow with content from accounts you don’t follow but might be interested in,” the blog post mentions.

User’s activity, information about the post, information about the person who posted and user’s history of interacting with someone are the most important signals across Feed. 

Next is Instagram making a set of predictions which usually are educated guesses at how likely you are going to interact with a post in different ways. “We add and remove signals and predictions over time, working to get better at surfacing what you’re interested in,” Instagram says.

How are Instagram Stories ranked?

Stories one sees are from people you’ve chosen to follow, as well as ads. Input signals for Stories that Instagram may show you include your viewing history, engagement history (looks at how often you engage with that account’s stories), and closeness (looks at your relationship with the author overall). 

How can one influence what they see on Instagram?

How one uses Instagram heavily influences the things they see and don’t see. Some of the tips are: 

• Add accounts to your Favorites list to make sure you don’t miss their content.
• Select your close friends for Stories. 
• Mute people you’re not interested in. 
• To stop seeing posts from an account, you can unfollow that account at any time.
• Respond to surveys from Instagram asking “is this post worth your time?” and use learnings from these surveys to help improve recommendations.

Updated: 01 Jun 2023, 05:44 PM IST