Of every twenty videos on offer, about two reach your screen.
Illustrative.
At any moment there are thousands of new videos the app could show you. You will watch maybe fifty before you put the phone down. So the app must choose. It gives every possible video a score, sorts them from highest to lowest, and shows you the top of the list.
Video A91 score
Video B84 score
Video C62 score
Video D40 score
Video E12 score
Made-up scores. You see the top; the rest wait.
This is why there is no such thing as 'the feed'. Your list is scored for you, your friend's for them. Same app, two different lists. Most of what is posted never reaches you at all. It scored too low and sits below where you stop scrolling.
Five videos, scored for you. Tap the one the feed shows first.
Tap the part of the picture that answers it.
Video A91 score
Video B84 score
Video C62 score
Video D40 score
Video E12 score
Video A
Right. Highest score goes first. The feed is the list read from the top down.
Video B
Not yet. Second highest comes second. You reach it if you keep scrolling, and most people do.
Video C
Not yet. Sixty-two is the middle of the pack. You might reach it after a minute or two.
Video D
Not yet. Forty sits near the cut. Many people would stop scrolling before it.
Video E
Not yet. Twelve is near the bottom. It is on the list, but almost nobody sees it.
Gather thousands of possible posts→Score each one for you→Sort by score→Show the top
Where does the list come from? Not only from accounts you follow. The app gathers candidates from everywhere: what your friends liked, what is popular in your town, what people like you watched. Then it scores all of them together. Following someone gets their post onto the list, not to the top of it.
Move the control to set how far you scroll. The app scored 2,000 posts for this session, which is a made-up round number.
Seen10 posts · 1%
Never reached1,990 posts · 100%
10 postsScroll 10 posts and you have seen 10 of the 2,000 on offer: about 0.5 in 100. The other 1,990 were scored, sorted and never shown.
Seen25 posts · 1%
Never reached1,975 posts · 99%
25 postsScroll 25 posts and you have seen 25 of the 2,000 on offer: about 1.3 in 100. The other 1,975 were scored, sorted and never shown.
Seen50 posts · 3%
Never reached1,950 posts · 98%
50 postsScroll 50 posts and you have seen 50 of the 2,000 on offer: about 2.5 in 100. The other 1,950 were scored, sorted and never shown.
Seen100 posts · 5%
Never reached1,900 posts · 95%
100 postsScroll 100 posts and you have seen 100 of the 2,000 on offer: about 5 in 100. The other 1,900 were scored, sorted and never shown.
Seen200 posts · 10%
Never reached1,800 posts · 90%
200 postsScroll 200 posts and you have seen 200 of the 2,000 on offer: about 10 in 100. The other 1,800 were scored, sorted and never shown.
Even at 200 posts, a long session, how much of the list have you seen?
About a tenth. The list is far longer than any session.
Right. Two hundred of two thousand is one in ten. Whatever you scrolled past, ten times as much was sorted below it and never appeared.
None. Scrolling shows random posts, not the list.
Not yet. Scrolling walks down the sorted list, top to bottom. The order you see is the score order, not chance.
Nearly all of it. Two hundred posts is a lot.
Not yet. It is a lot to read and a little of the list. The feed refills as you scroll, drawn from thousands that were scored before you started.
Move the control.
YouTube minutes from suggestions, 201870 in every 100
Netflix viewing from suggestions80 in every 100
Real numbers. The people who run YouTube said in 2018 that about 70 in every 100 minutes watched came from videos the app suggested, not ones people searched for. Netflix has said about 80 in 100 of what gets watched came from its suggestions. The list, not the search box, decides most of what gets watched.
Put in order how a video gets from being posted to being on your screen.
Tap them in order, first to last.
Posted→On your pile→Scored for you→Sorted→Scrolled
Right. The step people leave out is the middle one. A post does not go from being posted to being seen. It goes through a score, and the score is made for you, not for everyone.
Which of these puts a post ONTO your list, and which moves it UP the list?
One card at a time. Tap the pile it belongs to.
Card 1 of 5
You follow the account that posted it.
Your friend liked it.
You watched three videos like it yesterday.
It is popular in your town.
Thousands of people watched it to the end.
You follow the account that posted it. → Onto the list
Not yet. Onto the list. Following is a door in: it puts the post among the candidates, and the score decides the rest.
Your friend liked it. → Onto the list
Not yet. Onto the list. A friend's like is how the app finds posts from accounts you do not follow. It gets the post considered, not ranked.
You watched three videos like it yesterday. → Up the list
Not yet. Up the list. What you did before feeds the score, and a high score is a high place.
It is popular in your town. → Onto the list
Not yet. Onto the list. Being popular nearby is one of the app's ways of gathering candidates. A low score can still sink it.
Thousands of people watched it to the end. → Up the list
Not yet. Up the list. Watched to the end is a strong sign the score uses, so it lifts the post for almost everyone.
Onto the listwhere the app looks
vsvs
Up the listthe score
Right. Getting onto the list is about where the app looks: your follows, your friends, your town. Going up the list is about the score: what you and people like you did with posts like it.
Your friendposts every day
↓→
300 accounts and moreYour list
↓→
Your screenno sign of them
You follow 300 accounts. One friend posts every day, and you have not seen their posts in a month. What is the most likely reason?
They stopped posting.
Not yet. The question says they post every day. What changed is not their posting but their place in your sorted list.
The app removed them from your follows.
Not yet. Unfollowing without asking is rare and would show in your list of follows. The usual case is far more ordinary: still followed, scored low.
Their posts get onto your list and score low, so they sit below where you stop scrolling.
Right. Following puts them on the list. If you never tap, pause or reply, the score falls, and a low score is a place you never scroll to.
Lesson complete
The feed is every post you could see, scored and sorted, and most of it sits below where you stop.