Social media algorithms are rapidly evolving to prioritize engagement, personalization, and video-first content. Platforms now favour meaningful interactions like comments and shares over passive engagement, while AI-driven recommendations tailor feeds based on user behaviour.
Organic reach for brands is declining, making paid advertising essential. Short-form video content, such as TikToks and Reels, is being prioritized over static posts, and social media search optimization (SEO) is becoming more important as users treat platforms like TikTok and Instagram as search engines. Additionally, platforms give users more control over their feeds, offering options between chronological and AI-curated content. These shifts reflect a move towards more interactive, tailored, and ad-driven social media experiences.
This idea of a “marketplace of ideas” feeds into a view of social media as offering a level playing field, allowing all voices to be heard equally. When he took over Twitter (now rebranded as X) in 2022, Elon Musk said he saw the platform as a “digital town square”.
But does that fail to take into account the role of algorithms?
Algorithms can monitor our behaviour and determine what millions of us see when we log on—and, for some, it is algorithms that have disrupted the free exchange of ideas possible on the Internet when it was first created.
“In its early days, social media functioned as a kind of digital public sphere, with speech flowing freely,” Kai Riemer and Sandra Peter, professors at the University of Sydney Business School, told the BBC.
However, “algorithms on social media platforms have fundamentally reshaped the nature of free speech, not necessarily by restricting what can be said, but by determining who gets to see what content”, argue Professors Riemer and Peter, whose research looks at why we need to rethink free speech on social media.
“Rather than ideas competing freely on their merits, algorithms amplify or suppress the reach of messages… introducing an unprecedented form of interference in the free exchange of ideas that is often overlooked.”
Facebook is one of the pioneers of recommendation algorithms on social media, and its Feed, with an estimated three billion users, is arguably one of the biggest.
All social media platforms have their algorithm comprising various ranking signals. You can never determine all these ranking signals, but you can surely mold your content strategy to win your share of visibility on social media.
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