algorithmic anxiety

To return to a theme around here - these videos are the product of incentives, and though they’re extreme manifestations of those incentives, they’re hardly unique in being shaped by them. One commonplace that’s found among Reels that have some purpose and some plausible entertainment value is the “wait for it” thing, artificially delaying the... See more

Elan: How do you think about success when publishing a piece? If you have the traditional KPIs of number of page views or how far it spreads, what does success look like for The Pudding?

Matt: Great question. It’s definitely not hard metrics for us. Everyone has their own barometer of success, just as they have their own barometer of quality.

For... See more

The trouble with the internet, Mr. Williams says, is that it rewards extremes. Say you’re driving down the road and see a car crash. Of course you look. Everyone looks. The internet interprets behavior like this to mean everyone is asking for car crashes, so it tries to supply them.

spending too much time in the big algorithmic feeds winds up being a form of intellectual monocropping. It’s not terribly diverse or surprising. It’s not that the stuff in your feeds is all bad; some of it’s great! But it’s got a deadening sameness to it.

At scale, algorithms create the future they forecast.

Introduced by the author Kyle Chayka, the term ‘Filterworld’ encapsulates the phenomenon of uniformity shaped by the invisible hand of digital algorithms. In this digital age, algorithms are the unseen curators, dictating the content you consume and influencing your tastes, relationships, and the fabric of your daily life through interfacing... See more

Kids will not believe me when I say this, but people didn’t always absorb their “content” by way of mysterious algorithmic black magic on endlessly-scrolling crack feeds. We used to type web addresses into our browsers, and actually visit our favorite sites. This, going to “www dot college shitpost dot com” or whatever, was itself considered a

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