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Have you noticed that you don't see all of the Facebook posts of your Facebook friends on your news feed? Wonder why this happens?
In a nutshell, it's because you don't interact enough with that person's posts or they don't interact enough with yours, such as liking them or commenting about them. Here's more detail-it has to do with algorithms.
Algorithms are central to our digital lives, but most of us have no clue what they are. An algorithm, in short, is a set of instructions to solve a problem. They're at the core of computer programs.
Corporations and government agencies use algorithms to target online ads, trade stocks, price insurance, and identify potential terrorists. Algorithms can determine whether we get into college, get hired, get promoted, get a mortgage, or get a car loan.
Maybe the best-known algorithm today is Google's PageRank, which displays pages resulting from a Web search according to the number of other pages that link to them and the number of pages that link to the linking pages. Google is forever tweaking it.
The ever-changing algorithm behind Facebook's news feed, called EdgeRank, is also crucial in today's social media-infused world. It determines...