Account recommendations

Instagram’s account-suggestion system gathers possible matches from followers of accounts someone already follows, popular accounts in their region, and accounts related to topics or products they recently engaged with.1 Meta’s Transparency Center says the system weighs information such as mutual friends and the number of accounts the person follows when deciding which suggestions to put first.1 It also considers how long a suggested account has already been following the person receiving the suggestion.1

Instagram removes blocked and deactivated accounts from account suggestions and applies checks to remove material that may violate its Community Guidelines.1 Meta’s Transparency Center says its recommendation standards aim to avoid recommending material that is low-quality, objectionable, sensitive or inappropriate for younger viewers.3 Meta’s Newsroom also described a proposed protection that could keep teen accounts out of Suggested Users for adults exhibiting potentially suspicious behavior; it presented this as something Instagram would explore, not an established restriction.8

A Meta patent describes a way to make account recommendations less dominated by the most-followed accounts, without establishing that Instagram uses the method.9 The Meta patent groups accounts by follower count and assigns each group a value score.9 The Meta patent then uses weighted records of successful recommendations to determine the order of suggested accounts.9