Existing social media platforms (SMPs) make it incredibly difficult for researchers to conduct studies on social media, which in turn has created a knowledge gap between academia and industry about the effects of platform design on user behavior. To close the gap, we introduce Yourfeed, a research tool for conducting ecologically valid social media research. We introduce the platform architecture, as well key opportunities such as assessing the effects of exposure of content on downstream beliefs and attitudes, measuring attentional exposure via dwell time, and evaluating heterogeneous newsfeed algorithms. We discuss the underlying philosophy of interoperability for social media and future developments for the platform.

翻译：现有的社交媒体平台(SMPs)使得研究人员难以对社交媒体进行研究,这反过来又在学术界和业界之间造成了关于平台设计对用户行为的影响的知识差距。为了缩小这一差距,我们引入了“Youfeed”这一研究工具,用于进行生态上有效的社交媒体研究。我们引入了平台架构,以及一些关键机会,如评估内容接触对下游信仰和态度的影响,衡量通过时间间隔的注意力接触,以及评估各种新闻算法。我们讨论了社交媒体互操作性的基本理念以及平台的未来发展。