Had a buddy explain the algorithm is just pattern matching, not magic
I used to think social media algorithms were some super smart AI picking what I needed to see. But last week my friend Dave, who works as a data analyst, broke it down for me over beers. He said it's basically just looking at what I linger on, what I share, and what people like me click, then serving up more of that same stuff. He showed me on his own phone how watching three cooking videos in a row made his feed all recipes for a whole day. It hit different because I realized the algorithm doesn't care about truth or quality, it just wants me to stay on the app. So now when I see some wild conspiracy video trending, I get why the algorithm pushed it in the first place. Has anyone else here tried gaming the algorithm to prove how predictable it is?