Feed

When you open an app like Instagram, TikTok, or X, you see a list of posts. You swipe down, and there’s still more. This exact list is called a feed, roughly meaning “inflow” or “stream”. In the past, the order was simple: the newest post was on top. Today, in almost all major apps, a program decides which post comes first and which doesn’t show up at all. The feed is thus no longer a list, but a selection — and it looks different for every user.

The feed as a business model

Social networks make money with advertising. Advertising is paid for based on views. So the rule is: the longer someone scrolls, the more revenue. The feed is therefore the single most important component of these companies. If it generates a few percent more time spent, that amounts to billions in revenue for Meta or TikTok.

This explains why feeds come up so often in the news. TikTok became dangerous for Facebook mainly because its feed shows you videos from completely unknown people as soon as they perform well. Facebook long showed mainly content from friends. Meta then followed suit and rebuilt its own feed. A key term here is recommendation: content that you haven’t subscribed to yourself, but that the system assigns to you.

At the same time, the feed is a political issue. When a program decides which news millions of people see, this has consequences for elections and public debate. The EU’s Digital Services Act therefore requires large platforms to explain what criteria they sort by and to offer a non-personalized version.

How the order comes about

At its core, a prediction takes place. For every post that is even a candidate, a learning system estimates a probability: How likely is it that you will view it, like it, share it, or watch the video to the end? These values are combined into a score. Sorting then happens based on that. Whatever has the highest score ends up on top.

The system learns from what you’ve done before. Every click, every quick swipe-away, every second of dwell time is a data point. Millions of such data points from millions of users produce a pattern. You can picture it like a waitress who remembers what you ordered during your last fifty visits — and who also knows what guests with similar taste like to order.

A common misconception is the assumption that the app is listening in. That’s not necessary. Your behavior within the app already provides enough information. A second misconception: that the feed shows what you like. It shows what keeps you engaged. That’s not the same thing. Outrageous or extreme content captures attention especially well, which is exactly why platforms have to build in additional rules that demote such posts.

Feeds outside of social media

The term is older than social networks. RSS feeds are files that let a website provide its new articles in a machine-readable format. Anyone who subscribes to them gets everything chronologically and unfiltered. This technology still exists, among other things with podcasts: your podcast subscription is technically a feed.

Sorted feeds can be found almost everywhere today. Netflix's and YouTube’s homepage is one, as are Amazon's product recommendations or Spotify's Weekly Mix. News apps and Google Discover work this way too. The same principle always applies: from a huge supply, a short, personal list is created.

In practical terms, this means you can influence the feed. Hiding posts, muting accounts, entering search terms — all of these are signals. Many apps also let you switch to a purely chronological view. The fact that this option is usually hidden has a simple reason: it keeps users in the app for less time.