What in the Algorithm is Going On?

In this post I am continuing the conversation from my last post. But I will be focusing more on the algorithms themselves. They are certainly influencing (pun intended) our behavior for sure. Much has changed since the two giants YouTube and Instagram came into being. Even before the new kid on the block TikTok showed up the algorithms of the these two giant platforms was constantly changing. Inticially they seemed to change every five years or so and they seemed more organic when it came to discovery.

But over time this of course changed. The biggest sea change was when Facebook now known as Meta purchased Instagram and caused a tidal wave of upheaval. Many long time users complained that no one was seeing their content, no one could figure out what had changed, and everyone was frustrated. The platform became less organic and more competitive, and suddenly you were being encouraged to “promote” your content. And by promote I mean to pay IG to push out your content.

Youtube remained out of the fray, and its algorithm was different, but it too had a pay to play format, that for all intent and purposes did nothing. Trust me, I tried, and it was a you know what show. Just awful. For example I set up one campaign which was about Fashion Week put in all the FW keywords, other fashion related keywords as well as referencing platforms similar to my own which you could do; it was part of setting up the parameters of the campaign.

I mean, they kind of violated their own terms of service

And when I checked the metrics after the campaign ran it showed roughly %70 male users who watched the video just over 30 seconds, which was just long enough for them to click off the video/AD, and for it count as a view. Total waste of time and money. It was obvious they ran it on, or akin to male centric content like gaming videos to get the clicks and views, and did not adhere to any of the parameters I had set at all. I mean, they kind of violated their own terms of service.

Now fast forward to January of 2025 and the infamous TikTok ban and as just about everyone has been saying, the platform is not the same. Many people are saying their FYP is radically different and that they are not seeing the same content they had been seeing before the ban. And on the content creation side everyone except the really big content creators complained how their views completely dropped off a cliff. Along with this you suddenly have all these videos on your FYP telling you how to go viral. Right, so all of sudden no one wants to gate keep, everyone posting these videos just want to help us all out of the goodness of their hearts.

This reminds of last summer when there was some kind of change to the YouTube algorithm

Well if you believe that one there is a bridge connecting Brooklyn to Manhattan and it’s going cheap, hurry and snap it up while you still can. Hmm. This reminds of last summer when there was some kind of change to the YouTube algorithm. There was some chatter about it, but suddenly much like what happened in January of 2025 many people’s views dropped off big time. And just like the FYP, suddenly there were all these videos on YouTube saying “It has never been easier to set up a YouTube channel” or it has never been easier to go viral on YouTube, which of course was so not the case.

It almost seems like all of these platforms got wind of what other one was doing, and all decided to do kind of the same thing via the algorithm. After the TikTok ban there was A LOT of chatter that Meta had bought the platform. This is of course just a rumor, but well, this would not surprise me. It is not official, but TikTok is behaving awful similar to its main competitor. And now, just like said competitor I get messages in my inbox encouraging me to “promote” my video.

After all why should they promote your content for free if you will pay them to do it?

They say on YouTube that only %5 of content creators that post to the platform actually make money. That means %95 do not. I think all these algorithms work similarly: only really promoting about %5 of the content on the platform. The other %95 is just fodder, and hopefully that fodder will pay to play. After all, why should they promote your content for free if you will pay them to do it?

What say you? This photo is from August 2019. A friend and I shot this out east at the golden hour and when we drove down this alley/street and saw all the reeds we knew we had to shoot here. It was shot with my Canon Rebel T3i using a 50mm lens, and I think my friend did a great job. It you want to see more of the shoot click here.