How social media algorithms decide what you see

The same machine runs behind YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Pinterest, and once you see it the feed stops being mysterious. Learn the two-stage funnel that picks ten items out of a hundred million in a tenth of a second, why optimizing for clicks produces clickbait as a correct answer, and how content embeddings let a post from a zero-follower account reach millions. Finish able to explain any feed's behavior from its objective, and to tell real mechanisms from the folklore creators repeat.