Feed Audit & Letter

• Open the feed and count the first 20 items in order, once. Don't scroll back for better ones.
• Put each item in exactly one group: from an account I follow, recommended (an account I don't follow), labeled ad, or couldn't tell. "Couldn't tell" is a real finding. If you can't tell an ad from a post, that matters.
• Count topics roughly: sports, music, cooking, and so on. Two cooking videos are one topic.
• Of the recommended items, count how many were about a topic you already engage with a lot. This is the narrowing from 3.1.1.
• Write numbers only. Don't write what the posts were or who posted them.
• Your feed on one day is a small sample. Say so. It is evidence about your feed, not about every person's.

• Look in the feed menu, the settings, and the privacy section. Record whether you found each control easily, found it only after searching, or couldn't find it.
• "Couldn't find" doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It means it was hard for you to find, which is itself something a company can fix. Say "I couldn't find," not "there isn't."
• For the privacy summary, use the 3.1.2 questions: what is collected, why, and who else gets it. Count the categories collected, shared, and used for advertising, and apply the necessity test to one of them.
• If you can't find a plain-language summary, record what you tried. That is evidence too.

A good ask is one change to one feature that someone could check. Compare:

• One ask. Five asks give a company five easy reasons to say no.
• Be fair. Name one reason they might hesitate, and say why the change is still worth it. A letter that sees the other side is harder to dismiss.
• Make it checkable. Say how anyone could tell the change happened.

The page assembles your letter from your own fields, in this order: who you are and why you care, what you found, your ask, a reason they might hesitate and why it's still worth it, how to tell it happened, and a thank you. Here is an invented letter to an invented platform called Loopcast, built by the same code that builds yours:

Dear Loopcast team,

I am a high school student in a class about how AI is used in the world. I want to be able to start fresh when a feed stops showing me things I care about.

For a class project, I looked at my own feed and settings on Loopcast. This is what I found:
- Of the first 20 items, 7 were recommendations from accounts I don't follow and 9 were from accounts I follow.
- Of the 7 recommended items, 5 were about topics I already engage with a lot.
- Of the 6 controls I looked for, I found 2 easily, 2 only after searching, and 2 not at all (a way to reset what the feed has learned and information for users under 18). I may have missed some.
This is a small sample: 20 items, one day, one account. It may not match what other people see.

My request: I am asking you to add a "Reset my recommendations" button to the settings page that clears what the feed has learned about me.
One reason you might hesitate: Resetting could make the feed less accurate for a while, which might lower how long people stay.
Why I think it is still worth doing: People would trust the feed more if they knew they could start over, and they might use the app more happily.
A way to tell the change happened: The button would appear on the settings page and a person could tap it and see the feed change.

Thank you for reading. I would welcome a reply.

A high school student

Notice: every fact is a count from the writer's own audit, the sample is called small, the ask is one change, and nothing guesses at motives. The example has 7 evidence sentences to choose from, and the writer used 3.

A feed or its controls can work well for you and badly for someone else. Pick one group and write a question you would check: for example, "Can someone who uses a screen reader reach the 'not interested' option?" You can't answer it from your own feed, and you shouldn't say you have. You can ask it, and you can choose to include it in your letter.

• Swap letters with a partner. They answer five yes/no questions about your letter and write one comment. You reply and say what you changed or why you didn't.
• Read the letter yourself for anything that could identify you, then give it to your teacher.
• Your teacher decides whether anything is sent, and through which channel. The page never sends anything.