  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.
