how instagram algorithm works

how instagram algorithm works (2023) is a meme based on a workflow diagram that illustrates how the Instagram algorithm interacts with posted content. The original diagram is an attempt to visualise why some posts get more visibility than others and serves as a guide for platform users and businesses.

 The meme version of this diagram was posted in 2020 by the surreal meme maker @voidsurrealmemes. In my version of the meme, presented at Prix Photoforum 2023 as an installation – composed of used tarps, window colour paint (incl. glow in the dark), chalk pens, tape – I have extracted texts from my various internet lives, including captions from the Instagram community “same picture everyday accounts” of which I am a part, and created a revisited workflow diagram. With the use of recycled and worn plastic tarps and window colors, most often used in children’s crafts, the project reflects on the materiality of the digital and networked image and text. Through a playful reconfiguration of the workflow diagram, my aim, as artist and user, is to symbolically appropriate and intervene in this corporate workflow, ludicrously revising the corporate decisions made by Meta concerning data usage, content moderation, and censorship. This project questions the structuring of realities and narratives through workflow diagrams and algorithms, as well as makes visible the opaque mechanisms that we, as users of the platform, interact with daily.