Meta explains how its AI decides what you see on Facebook and Instagram

Unless you switch to chronological timeline on Facebook, the things you see on your timeline could seem pretty arbitrary at times. Now, Meta has given us pretty comprehensive look at how its AI systems decide on the posts that appear on our Facebook and Instagram feeds. The social networking giant has released 22 card systems for the platforms that explain how its AI systems rank content for its Feed, Stories and Reels. Each card explains how a certain aspect of Meta's platform works — for instance, the company explains that for Facebook Feeds, its AI system starts by gathering all potential posts by friends and Pages you follow. 

After that, the system considers various input signals, such as who created the post, how you interacted with them and how many of your friends have liked the post, if any. All those aspects will help the AI rank posts based on which you'll find the most relevant and valuable and then show them on your feed in order of the scores they get. The card systems also show how you can customize what you see on the platforms and link to instructions on, say, how to unfollow a person or a group and how to click "show more" or "show less" on a post to indicate if you like or dislike a particular subject. 

In a post announcing the cards' release, Nick Clegg, Meta's President of Global Affairs, listed the tools you can use to personalize your experience on the company's platforms. In addition to the two aforementioned tools, Facebook and Instagram have centralized menus with customization controls, called Feed Preferences and Suggested Content Control Center, respectively. Clegg also said that Meta is testing a new feature on Instagram allows you to indicate whether you're "Interested" in a recommended reel in the Reels tab, so the app can show you more similar content. At the moment, you can only indicate whether you're "Not Interested" in a specific reel. In addition, he said Meta is working on making the "show more" and "show less" feature more prominent. 

Meta has lifted the lid on how its algorithms work before the European Union starts enacting the Digital Markets Act in 2024. The new law will require online services like Facebook and Instagram to be more transparent on the technologies behind their recommendation algorithms. It will also require platforms to offer chronological feeds and will ban ads targeting you based on your religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity or political affiliation. Earlier this year, Meta also rolled out a new version of its "Why am I seeing this ad?" tool to provide more transparency on how your activities power its ad-matching software.

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