Personalization

The concept of personalization in social media refers to the method of conditioning content, recommendations, advertisements, user interfaces, and overall experiences on the platform to appeal to individual users. This kind of tailoring, or 'dynamic customization,' is powered mainly by algorithms and user-specific information—both past and current. What you see and interact with on your social media platform is supposed to resonate with only you.

In many ways, what you see is curated. Your feed should be an ongoing exhibition of content that somehow aligns with your interests, that in some way, shape, or form, has a near-constant narrative thread that makes the +1, like, comment, or share seem wholly reasonable if not inevitable. Indeed, the very recommendation of hashtags and newfound friends in your feed is powered by your supposedly algorithmically-honed senses of what might be interesting.

If there's any opposite to 'one size fits all,' it's got to be this kind of experience on social media. Yet, in delivering an experience that's purportedly just for you, social media platforms raise important questions regarding the privacy and safety of the data being used.