Miguel Afonso Caetano<p><a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/SocialMedia" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>SocialMedia</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Algorithms" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Algorithms</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Instagram" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Instagram</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/RecommendationEngines" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>RecommendationEngines</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/CoffeeShops" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>CoffeeShops</span></a>: "Social media acumen requires awareness of each platform’s recommendation algorithm. Walsh observed that some companies may have great stories to tell, but they “are not attempting to keep up with these algorithmic patterns that will allow them to be visible to a larger audience”. Maybe they don’t post often enough, or they don’t keep up with shifts, such as Instagram promoting videos more than still images, a particularly stark change that occurred around 2022 as the platform attempted to mimic TikTok. Staying on top of what the algorithm demands is not easy, and even well-informed guesswork doesn’t always produce results. As Walsh told me: “We’ve put a lot of time and energy into creating beautiful content. But as a result of that algorithm, we find we’re not necessarily hitting as many eyeballs as we think we could or should, and sometimes that can be a little disheartening.”</p><p>“I hate the algorithm. Everyone hates the algorithm,” said Anca Ungureanu, the owner and founder of Beans & Dots, a coffee company in Bucharest, Romania, with its original location in a former printing plant. Her goal was to build “something that did not exist at that moment in Bucharest” – a space that was, at least aesthetically, non-local. It draws an international crowd; when someone searches Google for speciality coffee shops in Bucharest, Beans & Dots pops up. Ungureanu developed an Instagram account full of cappuccino snapshots and more than 7,000 followers, but grew frustrated when she felt that the platform was taking away her ability to access her audience through the feed. When her cafe started selling coffee online, Facebook and Instagram seemed to throttle its reach – unless it bought advertising and boosted the social media company’s own profits. It felt like algorithmic blackmail: pay our toll or we won’t promote you.<br>(...)<br>Other cafe owners I spoke to made the same complaint."</p><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/jan/16/the-tyranny-of-the-algorithm-why-every-coffee-shop-looks-the-same" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">theguardian.com/news/2024/jan/</span><span class="invisible">16/the-tyranny-of-the-algorithm-why-every-coffee-shop-looks-the-same</span></a></p>