For example, Tiktok, Instagram, etc. all have an “algorithm”. But what is that? Who creates it?
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A strict list of things to do, in order, with a degree of logic thrown in (“Turn on stove. Put pan on stove. Put oil in pan. Take egg from fridge. Crack egg into pan. Wait 60 seconds. Check whether egg is cooked. If not, wait 30 seconds and go back to the “check” step. Put egg on plate. Eat egg.”) Most likely to be instructions for a computer, but doesn’t have to be.
An algorithm is nothing more then a series of generalized steps that solve a problem. The more general, the better (as in computer engineering), but they can be pretty specific too.
The algorithms you are talking about is the ‘tik tok feed algorithm’ or ‘fyp algo’. For that, it becomes a question of:
Q: what are they trying to do – what is our problem?
A: we want to show you the best images on your feed when you load the app and keep the user engaged on the app for a long time.
Q: how do we do that?
A: lets take all the categories we noticed that the user is interested, and find the best performing videos of those categories and show them to the user. Then lets explore their tastes by trying new categories and seeing if they engage with that new content.
– If they do – add them to that cateogory
– if they don’t – don’t show this to them anymore, and make a note that others who like the same categories as the user might not enjoy this one.
That’s obviously just the high level goal. But the algorithm is the steps taken to make that goal a reality. And then it’s the steps which support that main goal as well. Like categorizing posts that are added to tiktok. Or monitoring user engagement. Or supporting fast load times.
All of those problems, have a series of steps to solve them as *best as possible*. Whether they are efficient steps, now becomes the focus of science and engineering.
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