RAYMOND OGLESBY @RaymondOglesby2
October 15, 2024 – 9 minutes read time
This is for devices using Social Media. Screenshots are from iPhone 14 Pro running iOS 17.6.1
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Overview
Almost everything you see in your social media feeds today is governed by algorithms. Think of them as the digital rules and intelligence that social media companies use to deliver a steady stream of interesting content to your eyes. They are invisible conductors that note everything you like, click, or comment on and use that information to serve up more content you likely engage with.
Algorithms are far from perfect, though. Sometimes, they pick up on the wrong signals and stuff your feed with things you do not care about. If you find yourself increasingly uninterested in the posts you see in your feed, it’s often possible to reset those algorithms. Doing it correctly can completely change what your social networks show when you log in.
Let’s explore how to take back control of your social media.
YouTube
YouTube feeds you content based on what you watch, search for, and subscribe to. As YouTube says on some pages (accessible below), “Keeping your history makes YouTube more personal.” But familiarity can breed contempt.
First, reset your Watch History. On the mobile app:
Tap your name > Cog icon > Settings > Manage All History
Refer to the below image:
From here, you have a few options. You likely have Auto-Delete (Off) set up; click that, and you can tell YouTube to delete the tracked history of anything older than 36, 18, or 3 months. The shorter the time frame, the bigger the reset to your suggestions will be.
Alternatively, click where it says DELETE with a down arrow to access a menu to delete what you have seen today, in a custom range of time, or everything for all time. That final one is the nuclear option. Your suggestions will be totally fresh.
While here, click the Saving Your YouTube History link to change what YouTube saves. You may not want it to save searches because you may look for some wacky stuff. Or set it to turn off any YouTube history saving whatsoever. Scroll down the page to YouTube Customize Your Feed Feedback and click Delete to get rid of videos you specifically picked for your home feed in the past.
(On the desktop, click your avatar at the upper right and select Your Data in YouTube. Scroll down to YouTube Watch History and toggle the On button to Off so your history storage is paused. Click Manage your YouTube Watch History to access the menus as mentioned above, like Auto-Delete).
Clicking “Not Interested” under select videos can also impact the algorithm.
For a genuinely full reset, unsubscribe to every YouTube channel you follow.
On mobile, click Subscriptions at the bottom, then click All at the top, and you will see the full list. Click the bell icon to the right of each for a menu that includes Unsubscribe. (On Desktop, use Subscriptions> Manage to get to the list with the menus.)
Facebook’s main display is called the Feed. It features updates, photos, videos, and more from people, Pages, and groups you follow. posts based on what it believes you will like.
Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to adjust the Facebook Feed. Click your avatar profile pic at the upper right on the desktop and go to
Settings and Privacy > Feed
You will see options here to manage your favorites (people/groups you want to see the most), unfollows (people you do not want to dump, but do not want to see as much of), snoozes (people you want to temporarily unfollow), and reconnect (it lets you turn off unfollows). See the below image:
You can also opt to avoid looking at Facebook’s main page. Go right to Feeds (via the left-hand navigation), and then you can view only the Favorites, Friends, Groups, or Pages you want to see.
As you use Facebook daily, be sure to perform hides, snoozes, and unfollows on posts as you encounter them to “train” the algorithm and steer it toward the kinds of content you actually want to see.
You also can and should go into Facebook Ad Preferences and change things so you can impact the advertising in your Feed. You can also do this with ads as they pop up. Click the X to hide an ad immediately, or use the three-dot menu to hide or report it. You can also limit advertising topics you see by going to:
Settings & Privacy > Settings > Account Center > Ad Preferences > Customize ads
then click “See All” next to Ad Topics.
You can use Page Moderation to block certain words or phrases so they do not appear, at least in the comments. Go to:
Settings > Followers and Public Content > Hide comments containing specific words
You choose the list of words to block.
Since everything you see on Facebook is tied entirely to who you friend and follow, a complete reset would require you to unfriend everyone. Starting a new profile is more manageable. This is also pretty easy; click your profile pic to see a button that says See all profiles. In the following menu, it shows + Create new profile or Page. A personal profile is just for individuals, but you can make a new one to get a fresh, clean feed. A page is more for a business or organization, that multiple people can control. No matter what you create, you can easily switch back and forth between the profiles/pages. See the following image:
Instagram is part of Meta, just like Facebook, so many of the same rules we listed above apply. For example, the Ad Preferences/Ad Topics are similar. Access them by clicking:
Menu > Settings > Account Center > Ad Preferences.
Again, there’s no direct way to reset the algorithm, but you can manipulate things by clicking the three-dot menu on posts to set the person as an unfollow or to add to favorites. Click into the account of someone you see, and on the following menu, you can add a person as Close Friend, Favorite, Mute (Posts and/or Stories), Restrict (which limits interaction without a complete block), or Unfollow.
Under Settings, you will find Muted accounts, Blocked accounts, Close Friends, and other lists you can change as desired.
The best reset is to open a new account. You can do that by logging out of Instagram and creating a new user profile. After that, log in to either account, go to:
Settings > Account Center > Accounts > Add Account
and log into the second one. You can link the two accounts (or even a Facebook account) and switch between them. Remember, if you follow all the same people on the new account, it will look like the previous one.
X (Twitter)
Twitter gives you so little control over your feed that if you want to reset the type of content that the platform serves you, your best bet is to start a totally new account. If that’s a bit too drastic for you, try to adjust your existing feed by going to
Settings & Privacy > Privacy and Safety > Content You See
This will let you uncheck topics and interests the service believes you are into. Sadly, you can not uncheck them all at once. Also, under Privacy and Safety, scroll down to Ads Preferences, and uncheck all that.
When using the service, click the 3-dot ellipsis menu on any ads you do not like to block them. Same with anyone you follow that you have lost interest in. If you want to really get rid of everyone you follow to start fresh, go to Following and click the Following button (it will turn to a red Unfollow) next to every name to unfollow; this will take a while if there are a lot of them. If you do not want to do it manually, there’s a Chrome extension called X (Twitter) Mass Unfollow.
Microsoft’s social network for businesspeople (or those looking for work) does a pretty good job of just showing you the people you follow, but likes to sneak in a few ads based on what it thinks you like. Under your profile, pick:
Settings & Privacy > Advertising Data > Interests and traits
uncheck anything you are not into. Or turn them all off, but of course, then your ads are less relevant. In fact, go through all the “Data collected on LinkedIn” and “Third-party data” entries. If you turn them all off, you will get a totally new feed, albeit probably irrelevant.
Source: Social Media platforms
Disclaimer
Technology is always changing. Rarely is there static tech for smartphones and desktops. Thus, the contents of this post are only valid at the time of writing. Blog posts older than six months may have directions incompatible with your device or OS. Hopefully, older post content will continue to work as advertised. Thank you for reading TechSavvy.Life for Technology at Work For You.
Quote For the Day
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LM Montgomery
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