I’m Michael. I was a principal engineer at Facebook from 2009 to 2017, where I was the top code contributor of all time and also conducted hundreds of interviews. I recently co-founded Formation.dev, an engineering fellowship that trains and refers engineers directly into big tech. Ask me Anything!

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u/VisibleEffective9519 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

How is that incentivising you to spend 8 hours on Amazon? How is google incentivising you to keep looking stuff up? It’s not. Facebook and Instagram is. Not just social content, these platforms are also modifying and influencing your behaviour

u/michaelnovati replied · May 6, 2022 ★ FEATURED

I agree that that is a different model it's a good point and you are right. The algorithms are similar though, I don't really know how to convince you :D. Youtube recommendation algorithms are optimized to keep you watching endless videos. Amazon's algorithms are optimized so that you have such a consistent experience that you subconsciously choose Amazon whenever you need something. There is a lot going on here. Each case is completely different as you said and that's why we can't generalize anything about "the algorithm".