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Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

algorithmwatch.org

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Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#81

Post by v4dok »

Anecdotal: My explore feed has been 100% populated by semi-naked women for a long time. I realized that it could lead to some embarrassing moments when my friends would see it and I decided to change the feed. However, I was clicking on them so it as at least somewhat organic. The issue was, that since it was the ONLY thing on my feed, after some time I also had no option.

At some point a couple of months ago I decided that I wanted to change it. So I started to consciously like and follow hashtags and people around memes, standup, art and sports.

Now, I like primarily meme pictures and funny pieces and never on any semi-naked model. However, my feed has changed to a 80-20 (models-memes). I still think that there is some Instagram push there, since obviously, my preferences on content have changed, but the algorithm barely gave a damn.

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#82

Post by belval »

That title (not the HN one, the article one) is so editorialized that I doubt the credibility of the analysis. It feels like something people would think about and then find data to validate their perception.

As unfortunate (is it though?) as it might be, people do like that content and it creates engagement with the platform. I see it as business as usual for social media.

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#83

Post by akeck »

If you tap on a pic in the explore feed, and then tap the three dots in the upper right hand corner of the pic, and then tap "Not Interested", it sends a strong signal to the recommendation algorithm. After doing this a few times on similar pics, you will generally not see that category of picture in your feed.

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#84

Post by blaser-waffle »

iamben wrote: post #56
zxcmx wrote: post #2

It seems like the possibility that photos-of-undress are promoted by organic engagement is not discussed? (aka people seem to be clicking on this). Confession: this is the first thing that sprang to mind for me. Not that algorithms suck or companies suck (though both of those are true) but that people suck.

I'm sure this is exactly the case. I bet far more people interact (regardless of whether they 'like' it) with the swimwear/sexy pose shots than they do the photo of last night's dinner. I like a lot of photos, but in my own 'explore' timeline I've noticed categories of photos that appear from time to time, despite me never liking them. Until I did the whole "I do not want to see content like this" thing and made them…

> I guess a bit like reading a single story on Quora about going to prison, or surviving an aircrash - you can pretty much expect your daily digest to be full of those for the next 3 weeks.

Man, this but on Youtube. There is a definite chilling effect, where I don't click on ANY ads or anything that looks targeted or served solely because I don't want to get spammed for for the next month. You click one video about Joe Rogan and then it's all you see.

When Jordan Peterson got big I broke down and watched a couple of his vids to see what he was about. And holy crap I got nothing but conservative videos spewed at me for weeks, PragerU ads for months. Even now I'm hesitant to watch any BLM, COVID, or anything that's trending because the algo will just spew more crap at me.

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#85

Post by blaser-waffle »

y04nn wrote: post #27
9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article points to a Facebook patent for an "engagement metric" created at time of posting (that is, before user interaction) which specifically calls out "state of undress" as a factor to consider: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H... . ...and this metric is used to determine what gets shown in people's feeds.

The patent link was not working for me, here is an alternative: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8929615B2/

They can patent an architecture?

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#86

Post by viklove »

square_usual wrote: post #66
peer2pay wrote: post #31

> While our results show that male and female content creators are forced to show skin in similar ways if they want to reach their audience, the effect could be larger for females, and be considered a discrimination of female entrepreneurs. Overall this article strikes me as a large collection of pseudo-science but this sentence baffles me the most. Is the author arguing against their own conclusions?

I don't disagree about the style/tone of the article but this conclusion is borne out by their own data: > Posts that contained pictures of women in undergarment or bikini were 54% more likely to appear in the newsfeed of our volunteers. Posts containing pictures of bare chested men were 28% more likely to be shown. The effect is clearly larger for women, and if you have no problems with their data I don't think it i…

How do we "fix" it? Neural implants to change what we desire?

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#87

Post by lowdose »

watwut wrote: post #12

> the label “beauty”, for instance, was only returned for females Males just dont look good, or something. Edit: as someone noted before, my point was not that that men look badly. More that it is ridiculous bias I did not even noticed before.

Never seen a beautiful table?

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#88

Post by pas »

n_kb wrote: post #11
P-ala-din wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but as opposed to "offensive suggestions", there is nothing wrong with showing-skin.

Unless your don't want to, but you are obliged to use IG because your business focuses on a demographic on which IG has a monopoly (the 15-25 demographics in the EU).

That's where models, brand ambassadors, and influencers come in. It's not like lifestyle business just found out that sex sells.

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#89

Post by arsenico »

bzb3 wrote: post #13
zxcmx wrote: post #2

It seems like the possibility that photos-of-undress are promoted by organic engagement is not discussed? (aka people seem to be clicking on this). Confession: this is the first thing that sprang to mind for me. Not that algorithms suck or companies suck (though both of those are true) but that people suck.

People suck because they go online to look at attractive people?

Algorithms suck because they take this as an engagement metric. Or rather people who design algorithms in this way.

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#90

Post by Firadeoclus »

square_usual wrote: post #66
peer2pay wrote: post #31

> While our results show that male and female content creators are forced to show skin in similar ways if they want to reach their audience, the effect could be larger for females, and be considered a discrimination of female entrepreneurs. Overall this article strikes me as a large collection of pseudo-science but this sentence baffles me the most. Is the author arguing against their own conclusions?

I don't disagree about the style/tone of the article but this conclusion is borne out by their own data: > Posts that contained pictures of women in undergarment or bikini were 54% more likely to appear in the newsfeed of our volunteers. Posts containing pictures of bare chested men were 28% more likely to be shown. The effect is clearly larger for women, and if you have no problems with their data I don't think it i…

> The effect is clearly larger for women

I don't think it's that simple, given that their data show both the share of posts posted and shown as lower for women.

And there has to be a non-linear effect from increasing the share of posts posted with nudity, given that if it was, say, 66% then it would be impossible to boost that by 54%.

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