Who builds this, and why.
AlgorithmLens is built by one person, Justin Winuk, in Somerville, Massachusetts. It started from a plain question: what was actually in my feed this week? A feed keeps no record of itself, so the only way to answer was to make one.
The app is a counting instrument. It reads a short recording of a feed you already scroll and reports what appeared: which posts carried a printed ad label, which accounts came around again, what the platform marked as suggested. It stops where the screen stops. The method is published, the limits sit beside every number, and the example data on this site is fictional and says so.
The loop
Record a few minutes. Review what appeared. Record again another week, and the two scans sit side by side. Nothing in the loop looks at the platform's model. Nothing can.
Nothing here reads the platform's model. The loop only ever sees the screen.
a few minutes of a feed
what appeared, counted
two scans, side by side
Open to check
The methodology page lists every metric, its sample size and the prompts used to read a frame, verbatim. If a number on this site cannot be traced to that page, treat it as a mistake and tell us.
Read the methodologyWrite to us
Questions, corrections and research inquiries: hello@algorithmlens.com. Privacy requests: privacy@algorithmlens.com.