How Instagram Comments are Prioritized
A few years ago, Instagram changed the way that comments appear on posts. Out of potentially thousands of comments on a post, one or two posts will sometimes be “stuck” or featured to the bottom of a post. The algorithm to decide which account’s comments are features for a particular user considers factors including “verified users, number of likes, people you follow, and your history”. This also happens with the rest of the comments in the comments section under a post. Companies and branded accounts on Instagram are taking advantage of this system to promote their own page accounts by strategically commenting on other users’ posts.
This system is similar to the system of PageRank from class. Each Instagram account is a node in the graph and a higher value corresponds to a higher likelihood of being “stuck” on a post or appearing higher in the comments section of a post. Each account A_commenter that comments on a particular post by A_poster is one node in the graph, and there exists a graph with different weights for each user A_user who is viewing the comments on the post (each node A_commenter will have a different value depending on multiple factors, many of which deal with the node A_commenter’s relationship with the account A_user viewing the post by A_poster, so the values vary). The factors that influence a node A_commenter’s values include whether the account is verified, whether it is followed by the user viewing the post, whether the poster likes the comment, etc. Additionally, when a node Aliker (account with a high value) links to another node A_commenter (during the basic PR update) it passes a greater value onto the node it links to. In terms of Instagram comments, this means when an account Aliker with a high value (i.e. a mutual follower of the user A_user) likes a comment by A_commenter on a post by A_poster, the account A_commenter who’s comment was liked will have a higher value (will have a higher priority of being featured) in the graph for the user A_user.
Note: the formatting is weird, A_user should be A(subscript)user, etc.
source: https://www.vogue.com/article/how-instagram-comments-work