How to Hack Your Algorithm

In many airsofter's opinions, including my own, finding airsoft content on social media and content sharing platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok has been more challenging to find. Though these sites have algorithms to help show content that you may be interested in, many times they end up showing you completely random and seemingly unrelated content to what you may actually want to see. I'm here to show you how I hacked my algorithm to feed me more airsoft related content, but you can tailor this to anything you want to see more of.

It's a pretty simple philosophy, but it seems as if Social Media platforms are not telling us this in an effort to increase scrolling. The simple rule I follow is: Interact with what you want, hide what you don't, refresh. I'll show you how to do this through Facebook, where I successfully achieved this, but you can do this with some adjustments on other platforms. In essence you are going to spam through a lot of content, but you will eventually land on a more favorable algorithm in the end.

Let's start with removing posts. At least for me, it wasn't very obvious when I started using a new Facebook account that you can remove posts that don't interest you.

Let's take this post for example. It isn't really anything I'm interested in, especially on my airsoft focused Facebook Page. In the top right corner, I would hit the X to hide this post. What this achieves is removing the post from your timeline, as well as letting the algorithm know that you'd like to see less of it in the future. I, however, do take it one step further.

When prompted with a confirmation that the post was hidden, I will typically choose to also snooze content from that page. This further sends the message that you are uninterested in that type of content. I have rarely, if ever, seen content from that page again, even if the 30 days is over.

In addition to this, you want to be liking, following, and pursuing the things you are interested in. The algorithm looks for interaction, so positive interaction with a page is just as important as negative. So if you see a post you like, make sure to leave a reaction, maybe click on the profile and like some more of their content, and then follow them. These positive interactions are the part of social media we know works to an extent, but it's important to follow these steps if you want to continue to tailor your feed.

When you start a new account, the process will look something like this:

• Scroll through your timeline, removing any posts you don't find interesting.

• Like, comment, and click on content that you find interesting or align with what you want to see more of.

• Continue removing undesired content and interacting with good content for about five minutes, then refresh your page

• New content will appear, and you can start the process over

This process will continue for about a week or so. It will be a lot of content to sift through, but it will eventually begin to learn how you interact and begin feeding you content you actually like. In general, it will still throw some curve balls at you from time to time to test if it holds your attention, but it's important to follow the removal steps when it does. After having my new Facebook account open for about two months, I've pretty well cemented that I like to look at firearms, tactical gear, and airsoft content only. It rarely sends me random, unrelated posts anymore and I can continue on with my scrolling.

As stated before, you can pretty easily adapt this for any social platform. Most of not all platforms have some sort of removal process to show that you are not interested in something. On YouTube, you can click the three dots under a video suggestion, and choose "I'm not interested in this". On Instagram, they have a similar removal system to Facebook. It's just a matter of learning to only interact with things you're interested in.

The endless scroll is here to stay, but that doesn't mean you can't be in control of what gets put in front of you. I hope some of you find this simple hack helpful when you're interacting on social media. I'll see you all soon!