What is the algorithm and what it does in social media?
In: Technology
“The algorithm” is just a joke-y way to say “I have no idea why this social media site is showing me _______”.
An “algorithm” is simply a bunch of rules that someone programmed a computer with. If your algorithm is “when I tell you a number, square it and tell me the answer”, then feeding 5 into the algorithm produces 25 as a result.
Social media sites use complicated algorithms to decide, for example, what ads to show you: the ads that you see won’t be quite the same as the ads that anyone else sees. The specific details of things like this are closely guarded secrets (so that no one can, say, figure out how ads are served and manipulate that to make sure that their ad is shown to everyone), so if someone gets an ad for an inflatable light-up giant hamburger costume out of the blue, they may roll their eyes and say “the algorithm is at it again”.
Latest Answers