Thanks for downloading the inquiry. This week it's another chance to hear an episode we made earlier this year.

It got a big response and certainly blew our minds. And we thought that if you haven't heard it, you really should.

There's a place on the internet where almost 2 billion of us regularly go, many of us several times a day.

Facebook, the social networking site which Mark Zuckerberg started in his university dorm room and

which has grown in little over a decade into one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Some people say it's the most powerful company that's ever existed

because of the way we let it into our lives,

our biggest days, our smallest moments,

the best times and the worst.

It's a digital space where we can share information and news, but one that's shaped and

controlled by the technology giant and its powerful computer code.

I know I'm not alone in wondering just how much Facebook knows about me and what it's

doing with that information.

I'm Ruth Alexander and this is the inquiry and in this edition first broadcast in April

we want to know how powerful is Facebook's algorithm.

Part 1, The secret sauce.

What does the algorithm look like then?

You have glanced at the code.

What does it look like? It just

looks like a lot of computer code I mean it's really you know visually it's

pretty boring it's a number's letters right right. Right. Our first expert witness, Wilerimus, a technology writer at Slate magazine, is one of the very

few to have glimpsed the Facebook algorithm.

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