What is the algorithm and what it does in social media?
In: Technology
An algorithm in general is simply a mathematical way of solving a task. They’ve been around for millennia, but in a modern context they’re used a lot in computer programming so that computers do what we want them to do (sort this list alphabetically, skip every third song etc).
When people talk about “the algorithm”, they’re usually talking about the method by which a social media platform presents you with information – whose posts you see first, how often you see someone’s posts. By making small tweaks to this algorithm, these companies can “surface” wildly different information to you. Done on a mass scale, this can widely alter the things people read and thus the things they believe or understand.
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