Topics · Signal
Affinity
Contents
Affinity is an estimate of how connected someone is to another person or how much they like something, such as an application, in Meta’s patents123. These patents describe proposed social-network systems, not documented Instagram behavior, so they do not establish how affinity affects an Instagram creator’s reach1234. They also provide no current Instagram guidance or confirmed Instagram controls for creators seeking to influence affinity1234.
Signals used to estimate personal connections
Meta research and patents. These may not describe how Instagram works today.
Meta’s audience-selection patent proposes estimating affinity between people using a “friendship coefficient,” a score that takes account of both the quantity and quality of their interactions on the social network2. Meta’s patent also allows that score to reflect friendship labels selected by users, such as designating someone a close friend2. Meta’s network-traffic patent proposes examining patterns in data exchanged between devices on a nearby network to estimate how closely users are connected1.
Updating affinity through user actions
Meta research and patents. These may not describe how Instagram works today.
Meta’s feed patent describes affinity values changing when someone selects links in a small feed of news items about a person’s activities4. Meta’s application-management patent describes assessing affinity toward applications through actions treated as positive, negative or neutral feedback3. Examples in Meta’s application-management patent include uninstalling an application, minimizing it or trying to get more information about it3.
Using affinity to suggest a post’s audience
Meta research and patents. These may not describe how Instagram works today.
Meta’s audience-selection patent places affinity within a proposed process that analyzes a social-network post and orders potential viewers who may be interested in it2. Meta’s patent proposes giving potential viewers with higher friendship coefficients greater priority in that suggested audience2. Meta’s proposed interface would let the poster inspect the audience and see why individual people were included2. Meta’s patent also lets the poster confirm the suggested audience or change recipients before sharing the post2.
Using affinity to limit application access
Meta research and patents. These may not describe how Instagram works today.
Meta’s application-management patent proposes using affinity scores to compare applications and allocate their access to notifications, invitations and newsfeeds3. Meta’s proposed system gives applications with stronger affinity more access to these ways of reaching users3. For applications with low scores, Meta’s patent describes restricting or disabling that access, limiting an application’s ability to communicate and grow its user base3.