Brands and internet culture

Member lesson

A reference diet for taste

Lesson 8 of 10 in Brands and internet culture.

Checked against the makers' documentation on 9 October 2026.

Lesson

Taste is trained, and most people train theirs by accident. A reference diet is the deliberate version, a regular intake of things to read, watch and collect, chosen on purpose instead of served up by a feed. The difference matters because feeds learn from you. Instagram's own explanation of its ranking says that the posts you have liked, shared, saved or commented on are among the strongest signals of what it shows you next. Left alone, a feed narrows. A diet has to include things your feed would never offer, and finding them takes a little effort every week.

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Members answer these 3 questions and keep the ticket for this lesson. Every lesson has one.

  1. Question 1, locked

    Why does a reference diet have to be deliberate, according to the lesson?

    • Feeds learn from what you like, save and comment on, so left alone they narrow
    • Saved posts disappear after thirty days
    • Platforms charge a fee for saving posts
    • References only count once they are printed
  2. Question 2, locked

    What does Meta's Ad Library hold, according to Meta?

    • Only ads from the last seven days in your own country
    • All active ads across Meta's apps, plus active branded content with a paid partnership label
    • Only ads that broke Meta's rules
    • Every ad ever run on Facebook
  3. Question 3, locked

    In the lesson's terms, what turns a saved image into a reference?

    • Saving it at a high resolution
    • Saving it to a shared board
    • One sentence on what it teaches
    • The owner's permission to keep it

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