Scour social media, and you will undoubtedly encounter two schools of thought about understanding the infamous algorithm. Let me be the first to warn you that you likely won't recognize them at first. Trust me, when you do finally recognize these two schools of thought, you won't be able to unsee them.
On the one hand, some people spend every waking minute trying to learn the algorithm. These are the people who literally live on social, and they're easy to recognize. They're the ones who post 3x per day, space out their captions into a long thread of individual sentences, comment on hundreds of posts, max out their connection requests, and appear to post merely to check a box.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but these people appear to worship the algorithm as if it's their God. Their platform of choice is the only place they plan on living, and you know they know it's not real; they just aren't willing to admit it.
The next "school " is the people who know enough about the algorithm to know they won't bother trying to learn it. They want engagement, popularity, and the "blue badge," but they aren't willing to put in even a fraction of the work to get there.
This group consists of people trying to dupe and outwit the algorithm. They're in the engagement pods, using AI to comment, using tools to send you DMs, and ironically, bragging about the size of their network.
It's sad because those of us who don't follow an algorithm, who don't care about our content being judged, are watching the platform we originally joined for meaningful connections get watered down by people duping it.
No one actually knows the algorithm. People might say that they do, and at times, they might even be close, but I would bet that about the same time someone starts to figure it out, the platform changes it.
Social media platforms make money off selling ads and keeping you on the platform as much as possible, so if you were to figure out their secrets, you wouldn't need to.
Let's not forget that social media is not a real place. We don't work for these platforms; they are supposed to work for us.
Please keep this between us,
Derek
