Pro tip: turned off autoplay on my feed for 3 weeks and tracked what got pushed at me
I kept seeing the same 5 accounts pop up on my feed even though I never followed them. So on May 2nd I turned autoplay off and wrote down every video that showed up first for 21 days. About 60 percent of them were from accounts I don't follow, and half of those hit the same 3 talking points word for word. It looked way less like an algorithm pushing what I like and way more like someone paying to put it there. Has anyone else tried writing down what gets pushed at them? I want to compare notes.
This matches something I keep noticing off the feed too, like how the same few brands end up on every store shelf while the small ones get pushed to the bottom corner. It's the same move, just a different screen. Your 21 days of notes is a solid little test, and 60 percent from accounts you don't follow is a big number. Half of those hitting the same 3 talking points word for word is the part that bugs me most, because that's not a machine guessing, that's a script with a budget. I've started doing a smaller version of this, just screenshotting stuff that shows up from nobody I follow and saving it in one folder, and the repeats add up fast. Keep that log going and post the list, because receipts beat vibes every time.