8+ Presentation Skills Every Marketer Needs🙎‍♂️  30 August 2023

LinkedIn updates its homepage algorithm 🎯

LinkedIn is stepping up its game in making the homepage feed more relevant to users. They're doing this by leveraging something called "large corpus sparse ID embeddings."

The Nitty-Gritty
LinkedIn aims to offer content that's not just engaging but also super relevant to each user's professional goals and interests. To do this, they've upgraded their model to handle a ton more parameters, which basically means they can deliver higher-quality content. They're using these things called "sparse ID features" (like hashtag IDs or post IDs) and transforming them into what's known as an "embedding space." These embeddings help the algorithm understand user behavior and preferences, making the feed more personalized.

They've also tackled the 'cold start' problem, where the system doesn't know much about new users or items. By mapping these to the existing embedding space, they can still offer meaningful recommendations.

Tech Stuff
On the tech side, they've made some serious improvements to their machine learning infrastructure to handle these large models. They've optimized their training processes, even achieving a 40x increase in speed. They're also focusing on in-memory serving to improve online engagement metrics.

Future Plans
LinkedIn is looking to refresh their models more frequently and is exploring new modeling directions to reduce latency and memory usage. They're pretty stoked about the advancements they've made and are looking forward to pushing the boundaries even further.

linkedin.com  

Meta closes nearly 9,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to Chinese ‘Spamouflage’ foreign influence ⛔

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has shut down nearly 9,000 accounts linked to a Chinese political spam network known as "Spamouflage." This network was targeting users globally, including Australia, the U.S., U.K., and Taiwan. The investigation started back in 2019 and involved multiple research groups.

Here's the nitty-gritty:

Meta removed 7,704 Facebook accounts, 954 pages, 15 groups, and 15 Instagram accounts for violating their inauthentic behavior policy. About 560,000 accounts followed one or more of these pages.

The Spamouflage network was active on over 50 platforms, including YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit.

The content typically included positive commentary about China and criticisms of the U.S. and western foreign policies.

Interestingly, the network seemed to operate from a shared location, like an office, with specific activity patterns.

Despite its scale, Meta says the network struggled to gain traction outside its own echo chamber, likely due to poor quality control.

theguardian.com