Had a day last week where my engagement tanked 80% and I realized the algorithm was punishing me for posting at 3am

I thought I was beating the system by scheduling a post when nobody else was online, but the algorithm just buried it because zero people interacted within the first hour, and now I'm stuck wondering if I should delete it or just let it rot.

3 comments

3 Comments

wells.christopher5d ago

Man that's rough! I've had the exact same thing happen and honestly I'd just leave it up, sometimes posts randomly pick up traction days or weeks later when nobody expects it.

tessap735d ago

Wait does @wells.christopher actually think that works in practice or is he just trying to be nice? I've had posts sitting there for weeks with no engagement and then one random comment shows up and somehow it gets twenty more likes out of nowhere. It's like the algorithm just decides to wake up one day and remember your post exists. Leaving it up feels like the safest bet anyway since taking it down guarantees nobody sees it. Might as well let it rot in the feed just in case.

charles_baker285d ago

Yeah, the "let it rot in the feed" part is exactly what I was thinking too. I used to delete posts after a few days if they got nothing, figured it was pointless clutter. But after reading this I realize I was probably killing any chance they had. I've seen it happen where a post from two weeks ago randomly gets a comment out of nowhere and suddenly it has ten new likes. So now I just leave everything up, even the dead ones. Makes more sense to let the algorithm do its thing whenever it feels like it. Got a few old posts that sat for almost a month before anyone even looked at them.