Too much content is a boon and curse on the Internet. If you search for any information, you will find lots of sources. Most of it is of no use to you, but you have to either get through it or adopt anything that comes your way. But it’s a nice thing too because anyone can share what they know on the Internet. There is no permission required.
To tackle this, many platforms have algorithms. The algorithm works by studying the content, understanding users’ needs, and combining the platform’s profit to rank the content.
The problem then is you are back to square one. Even if you make content – there is a new gatekeeper, the algorithms to whom you should please. Else, your content will never see the light of the day.
Bad Algorithm
If you want to see an example of a bad algorithm, go to Facebook. They show you posts or stories based on their idea of how important it is. Maybe your friend posted a photo, and you didn’t react to it. The next thing you know, they will stop showing you the photos from that friend. Facebook decides with whom you can be friends based on your interaction. Most people don’t interact with posts from friends all the time, but they still want to receive their notifications.
Facebook limits the organic reach of pages you have followed. They won’t show their posts and ask the page owner to pay to reach the people already following the page. What was the point of someone following the page then?
Good Algorithm
Reddit has an amazing voting system. It’s anonymous for some random numbers. This makes sure there is no upvotes or downvotes based on other people’s reaction. It gets calibrated, and only when it reaches some threshold does its upvote number get public.
This ensures a better system to rank any content. And that’s why among all the social media platforms, Reddit is still a great platform for genuinely quality content. And its separation of topics makes it easy for specific people to upvote specific content.
Their community can be compared to the Wikipedia volunteers. The community on Reddit goes through many submissions and votes them to have a good ranking on the front page of that subreddit. It’s an amazing collaboration between real humans and algorithms.
The Best Algorithm
Could there ever be the best algorithm for everyone? And the answer is obvious. Each of us has different expectations of how things should be served to us. And so, although each platform has its own algorithm, it would be better if these algorithms were available as a plugin to use.
For example, if I love Google’s algorithm, then I should be able to put that algorithm on Facebook and change my timeline. This way, each of us would have their unique timeline as they intend.
To add more choices, developers could make their own algorithms that anyone could use. The effect of this would be there would be thousands of different algorithms. But everyone would be using the best algorithm. Because to each one of us, the definition of best is different. And you can use that different algorithm. It would make more players get a piece of the pie than a few companies winning. And it’s always better to have 10,000 different companies at moderate success than a couple of companies at monopoly level success. But then again, why would these monopoly companies do such a thing?
Which platform’s algorithm do you enjoy the most?
Rohan's blog 