how to survive being chronically online
The anxiety isn't determined by the presence or absence of code. It comes from a lack of transparency and control. You are susceptible whether or not TikTok exists, whether or not you delete it. Logging off is one tool, but it will not alone cure you.
Are.na • So You Want to Escape the Algorithm
Social media is no longer meant for connecting with friends; it is designed almost entirely to facilitate the following of brands and the monetizing of personalities.
Kyle Chayka - The Desperation of the Instagram Photo Dump
The collection of so much personalized data—around what time of day we turn to Sade or how many seconds of a NewJeans song we play—suggests a future without risk, one in which we will never be exposed to anything we may not want to hear.
Or that we may not want to see.
In that way, some consumers have yielded to a type of techno-fatalism. People know that algorithms exist and often dictate how culture is disseminated to them—and that there’s not much they can do about it, save for abandoning the platforms altogether and embracing a retro-Luddism about their consumption choices.
The Technology That Actually Runs Our World — The Atlantic
True disconnection, like true wilderness, is an empty goal. Whether we have shunned social media or not, the internet does not cease to exist as a driving force in the world, any more than ecological systems cease to shape our lives the minute we reach the end of the forest trail and hop back in the car. The concepts of the “offline world” and the... See more
Real Life • The Great Offline
But these answers lose the messy, endearing excess of any good Reddit thread. They appear like takeaways instead of teasers, final answers instead of entry points for further discovery; you are unlikely to fall down a rabbit hole of posts from here.
apple.news
Ways AI shuts the door on entry points to discovery and closes pathways to rabbit holes
It’s been endlessly argued that algorithms influence too much of what we watch, listen to, read, and even think. Personal taste erodes while decision-making is outsourced to the platform.
Beware the Curators
The hyperlink, in this sense, is the building block of the modern internet.