About this tool

The Algorithmic Feed Simulator is a classroom tool for teaching K-12 students how social media algorithms work. The teacher customizes a set of sixteen hypothetical social media posts. Each post appears on a feed with editable stats: followers, likes, comments, whether the post has a photo or video, whether the viewer follows the account, and whether the viewer tends to engage with similar content. These are the data points real social media algorithms weigh when deciding which posts to promote and which to suppress in a user's feed.

Click “Share with students” for a link (or a QR code) that opens the teacher's customized version of the feed on any other computer.

Once they're in, students can manipulate the posts' stats and watch the posts shift upward or downward in the feed. Switch between the Algorithmic feed and Chronological feed tabs to compare a ranked feed against the recency-based feeds of yore.