Up close and personal: when the algorithm goes too far

There’s an irony here: Algorithms were once believed to untether us from the masses and offer paths for personalization. But “For You” is not about pushing the limits of our artistic palates, but a device to serve us what the platform wants us to be satisfied with, herding us into perfectly predictable siloes that can be targeted with more “precise... See more

In the post-hipster era, you listened to what Spotify told you to listen to. If you read a book, it was because the precise pattern of blobby pastel-coloured shapes on its cover contained coded instructions to TikTok’s algorithm that sent it zooming to the top of your feed. Your tastes and preferences were decided for you by vast crystalline machin... See more

4. The increasing power of algorithm-driven curation. Today, curation is also being enabled and accelerated by the use of increasingly powerful personalization algorithms. One of the best current examples is TikTok’s “For You” page which uses a powerful algorithm to show users the content they want to see.