Explore page: the discovery surface, and it is different for every person

It is the magnifying glass tab. Unlike the feed, which is dominated by accounts you already follow, Explore exists precisely to show what sits outside your circle.

The answer to the most common question is no: nobody sees the same thing. Explore is built account by account, from what each person liked, saved, commented on, watched to the end and which profiles they visited. Two people in the same country on the same day see completely different grids.

Which is why someone's Explore says a lot about that person's behaviour on the platform, and nothing about what is trending in the world.

The central mechanism is similarity. Simplified: the system looks for accounts resembling the ones you have shown you like, and shows content that people resembling you engaged with.

The signals that weigh most:

• Interaction history. What you liked, saved and commented on, and above all what you saved.
• Popularity of the piece. Engagement velocity right after publishing, especially shares.
• Information about the publisher. An account consistent about one subject is easy to classify.
• Your history with that account, if any exists.

There is no button and no trick, but there is a posture:

• Subject consistency. An account about one thing is easy to classify; an account about everything has nobody to be compared to.
• Strong initial performance. The initial delivery is the test. A piece that engages quickly with existing followers earns expanded delivery.
• Shares and saves. They are the strongest signals that content is worth showing to a stranger.
• Readable context. A caption describing the content, on screen text, clear audio. The system has to understand the piece to know who to offer it to.
• Reels. Short video still has the most direct path to discovery.

This is useful for personal use and for market research alike, and almost nobody uses it:

• The not interested button. Every piece in Explore has an option to say you do not want to see that, and it is the most direct signal you can send.
• Interact on purpose. Saving and finishing content on the subject you want to see is the fastest way to retrain the grid.
• Stop opening what you do not want. Curiosity is a signal too, and it reads as interest.
• Content preference settings, where specific topics can be limited.

For anyone working with content this becomes a tool: an Explore well trained on your niche is a better reference source than any manual search.

• My account is consistent about one subject, and easy to classify.
• I measure shares and saves, which are the discovery signals.
• My caption and on screen text describe the content.
• I use the not interested button to train my own Explore.
• I do not expect Explore to be the same for everyone.