Why social media algorithms hurt after a breakup

He’s heartbroken, and he’s moving on Instagram. You type your ex’s name with tears in the search bar. It was a mess break up; you squint so you don’t see that they’ve archived photos of the two of you, and with shaky fingers, you tap their profile and unfollow them.

The next day, you see their tagged photo at the top of your feed. Their friend – who still follows – sent it. Once again, she sheds tears. He is blowing. How does this happen?

Possibly, “the” algorithm. Across the Internet, users have he complained about facing her with profiles and memories they would prefer not to see. If that’s happened to you, you’re not alone — researchers spoke to Mashable about why this happens, and what you (and the forums) can do about it.

How do algorithms work?

Social media algorithms are complex, and platforms don’t reveal much about their inner workings. What we do know is that social media relies heavily on who you are communicating with; Instagramfor example, it says “its algorithm relies on ‘signals’ based on how you use the app, and how other people interact with you.” The posts you see depend on who you engage with – your “network” by nature.

Many algorithms make assumptions based on who you interact with, often over months or years, data scientist Kristine Snyder told Mashable. If you suddenly don’t want to do something with one or more people you’ve shared a lot of data with for years, the algorithm might not catch that right away.

The algorithms “just look to see if those connections were there before and assume they still are until there’s enough data to say they’re not,” Snyder said. “And it can take a significant amount of time for there to be enough data for the algorithm to understand that that connection is gone.”

Why social algorithms hurt after a breakup

People respond to separation with compassion; not so with the algorithm. “Algorithms are generally not coded to be sensitive,” Snyder said. If there is no feedback mechanism in the network – such as blocking someone – the algorithm needs time to collect new data to decide that you no longer want to communicate with this person.

“Algorithms are generally not coded to be sensitive.”

“You can’t capture the essence of human life and human experience into bits and bytes yet,” said Anthony Pinter, assistant professor of teaching at the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Pinter studies life transitions and the ways people manage their data after experiencing such a transition – such as a breakup. (His latest work is about music and separation, and he currently runs the survey about breakup songs you can participate.)

In the 2019 paper”Will I Never Be Free From All This Evil?“, Pinter and his co-authors realized that people had unexpected, offensive conversations with content related to their former partners because of Facebook’s algorithm. This happened in various places on Facebook – the social network where the paper was focused – such as in their study. , in groups, or with the “On This Day” memory feature.

This paper also considered another post-breakup problem: Two friends. Even if you unfollow or block an ex, you can still connect with your friends and family. This connection complicates what to do with your online presence after the relationship ends. Some of the people Pinter and his co-authors spoke to for this paper pointed out that it is not always appropriate or effective to disconnect from a former employer’s network.

Although this paper was published a few years ago, “the ways in which these platforms still use loose ties and third-party connections to make recommendations, can still be problematic,” said Pinter, such as recommendations on who to follow on Facebook or. Instagram.

When you break with someone, “you break with the whole network to some degree,” Snyder said. The algorithm will not see how the entire network of relationships changes after the breakup.

“Those kinds of things where something was communicating, and then all of a sudden, that communication is broken in a way that the algorithm has no way of understanding – that’s where the problems can come in,” he said.

Ultimately, we can’t control what we see on social media, so seeing something that upsets us may not happen. “If you’re not the one making the decisions about what you see, it’s really hard to avoid those things that will continue to cause that pain and hurt in a way that you can’t heal – without completely leaving social media,” Snyder continued.

What can social media do?

“Humanization algorithms” are difficult to create platforms for, for many reasons.

One reason is that there is a trade-off between stability and responsiveness when developing algorithms, Snyder said. Social media algorithms are not built to adapt to rapid changes like fragmentation. “It’s really hard to have an algorithm that’s built for one thing work well for another thing, when things suddenly change,” he said.

Another challenge is that different people react differently to separation. In study published in 2022Pinter and co-author Jed Brubaker identified two types of people after a breakup: “historians” who focus on the past and “revisionists” who focus on the future. The former usually do not delete data from their social networks because they believe that doing so will be true to who they are now. The latter type of person deletes the data because who they used to be (or who they used to be) is not who they are moving forward.

“It turns out that designing features for these two very different types of people is probably difficult,” says Pinter, “because designing a feature for one type of person almost certainly creates a feature that will harm the other type of person. .” Designing an algorithm that encourages users to delete data may offend someone who believes that doing so is not true – but designing something that encourages retention may not work, either.

Pinter has some suggestions for what platforms can do, such as giving users better tools to save memories but keeping them in accessible places. That exists in some form — like Instagram’s archive — but the problem with that archive, Pinter says, is that it’s hidden and “just a bucket you dump posts into.” So you propose an archive with powerful organization so that users can pick and choose what they see in their archive.

“There’s a really ripe area here for designers and other researchers to think about in terms of, ‘What if it’s not just removal, but what if our historic features are improved?'” Pinter asked.

The platforms can also offer an easy way to unfollow someone without having to tap on their profile, such as an option to do so in the search bar, he said.

The risk of better algorithmic features of the split is forcing users to provide more data to the platforms than they already do, but there may be ways around that. Features like Facebook’s Relationship Status can also be used to match algorithmic suggestions or changes when you go from “In a relationship” to not, Pinter suggested.

What can users do to ‘fix’ their algorithm?

This issue is difficult from both the designer’s and the user’s perspective.

“It’s a difficult place to navigate, either as someone who has had an event in their life, or suddenly has no one or someone trying to design an algorithm that can deal with those things,” Snyder said.

Pinter recommends that users delete the data if they don’t want it to be fodder for recommendations – but even that is wrong. In a 2019 paper, Pinter noted that “participants who had vowed to remove everything, it turned out they hadn’t, so they were still getting annoying or unexpected recommendations.” Pinter also stated that he is also a person who looks to the future, but noted that other research shows that finding space after a breakup important for healing.

Then again, you may not want to cut your ex out of your life. “Networking is not always black and white,” Snyder said. Sometimes, you may want to unfollow or block your spouse, but not in all cases.

“It can be very difficult when you break up with a certain type, you don’t want to cut all the good things you had from that, more than like, to break up, you want to remember the good things,” he continued.

That answer lies with you. Chances are, even if you’re unfriended or maintaining those loose ties, it will take time for the algorithm to catch up. Pinter also advises users to think carefully about what they post online going forward.

You can also take a break from social media for a while. While there are potential changes that platforms can implement to make the split easier, they don’t exist yet – and taking some space from the platforms themselves would be the best solution right now. If you cry, exit the Instagram app.