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When I say “I don’t know where everyone went,” I know everyone’s out there surfing the web , of course, but it feels like it’s a different place now. When the algorithms are determining everything we should be seeing, it’s a much less personal internet. The “For You” pages of the world are right, I am interested in that content, but I’m not seeing ... See more
I miss human curation
For example, if the platform determines that someone loves movies, that person will likely see a lot of movie related content because that’s what captures that person’s attention best. This means platforms can also decide what consumers won’t see, such as problematic or polarizing content.
Michael Mignano • The End of Social Media and the Rise of Recommendation Media
If you serve as a mechanical slave to mass media and online algorithms, you’ll end up with intellectual diabetes. To find quality information, you have to rebel against the incentives of mass media and the algorithms that threaten its business model.Make no mistake. For the conscious news consumer, there has never been a better time to be alive. Th... See more
David Perell • The Paradox of Abundance - David Perell
The Banality of Online Recommendation Culture
A recent surge of human-curated guidance is both a reaction against and an extension of the tyranny of algorithmic recommendations.
By Kyle Chayka
October 30, 2024
Illustration by Ariel Davis
Save this story
In the 2010s, affiliate marketing became a dominant strain of online business models. The Wirecutte... See more
A recent surge of human-curated guidance is both a reaction against and an extension of the tyranny of algorithmic recommendations.
By Kyle Chayka
October 30, 2024
Illustration by Ariel Davis
Save this story
In the 2010s, affiliate marketing became a dominant strain of online business models. The Wirecutte... See more
Kyle Chayka • Unnamed Document
Nearly all popular consumer software has been trending towards minimal user agency, infinitely scrolling feeds, and garbage content.
Ivan Vendrov • The Tyranny of the Marginal User
We filter by ourselves: We
Kevin Kelly • The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
To accomplish this goal, the “proud extroversion” of the early Web soon gave way to a much more homogenized experience: hundred-and-forty-character text boxes, uniformly sized photos accompanied by short captions, Like buttons, retweet counts, and, ultimately, a shift away from chronological time lines and profile pages and toward statistically opt... See more
Cal Newport • The Rise of the Internet’s Creative Middle Class
“We are the generators of the Internet, we are generators of the media. What we give our time, attention, and money to is what thrives, and what doesn’t get it is what dies.” -Ezra Klein
More broadly, social networks have messed with our privacy settings in more ways than one. Everything is public now, partly due to outrage culture and “social highlight reels,” but as a result, there will be a big pendulum swing back to private networks. Facebook is a lot like Walmart in the sense that it's just utility oriented, and it doesn't rea... See more