alt Hacker Newshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16101310 (2018)
> "Matt Mayberry, who works at a California startup called Dopamine Labs, says it's common knowledge in the industry that Instagram exploits this craving by strategically withholding "likes" from certain users. If the photo-sharing app decides you need to use the service more often, it'll show only a fraction of the likes you've received on a given post at first, hoping you'll be disappointed with your haul and check back again in a minute or two."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28763413 also speaks to this.
(Dopamine Labs is now boundless.ai, only one example, the reward hacking mentioned is everywhere in socials, adult content, sports betting, for reward maxxing)
Replies
That's a weird old myth. I don't know why you dug up an old quote from a startup founder pumping his startup from 2018 in The Globe and Mail.
There were investigations into it after that the conclusions was that nobody believed it or could replicate it: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/01/does-instagram-withh...
Either the person was making something up, or he just didn't understand how hyperscale apps work toward eventual consistency rather than having everything propagated the instant you press the button.
I think that should be illegal. I don’t know how to legislate it in a way that makes sense and actually accomplishes the goal (or if that’s even possible), but I would support someone trying to figure it out.
It’d be fairly easy to set up an experiment to validate if that were the case.
It might be anti-bot feature, i.e. verifying that those likes are not from bots. YT delays views counter update for similar reasons.