MK
@mkay
MK
Cultural production is ever more finely attuned to attention, which is ever more pervasively measured and monetized. Commerce and culture are locked in an ever-tighter embrace.
Rogers Brubaker • Hyperconnected Culture and Its Discontents
In a way, recommender systems have become some of the most important opinion leaders in the industry. The same way a recommendation from a trusted friend can go a long way — compared to, let's say, an ad you see on Instagram — a recommendation from a "trusted" algorithm brings about a sort of post-social proof.
Music Tomorrow • Towards Recommender System Optimization: Our Data Tool for Algorithmic Optimization on Spotify [Part 1]
Spotify, for example, has invested heavily in its own curation services — both algorithmic and human — after finding that many of its listeners were baffled by superabundance, burdened by excessive choice and uninterested in charting their own paths through the digital wilderness.
Rogers Brubaker • Hyperconnected Culture and Its Discontents
But connection as a primary purpose has declined. Think of the change like this: In the social-networking era, the connections were essential, driving both content creation and consumption. But the social-media era seeks the thinnest, most soluble connections possible, just enough to allow the content to flow.
Ian Bogost • The Age of Social Media Is Ending
That changed when social networking became social media around 2009, between the introduction of the smartphone and the launch of Instagram. Instead of connection—forging latent ties to people and organizations we would mostly ignore—social media offered platforms through which people could publish content as widely as possible, well beyond their
... See moreIan Bogost • The Age of Social Media Is Ending
Moreover, as the critic Rob Horning has argued with respect to TikTok, algorithms do not simply discern what we want and serve it to us; they train us to want what they can serve us. Successful platforms do not just discover what consumers want — they produce the consumers and the forms of consumer desire that they need.
Rogers Brubaker • Hyperconnected Culture and Its Discontents
Some invest a lot of time and skill in crafting TikTok videos, but neither time nor skill is required. If TikTok “enables everyone to be a creator,” as its former mission statement proclaimed, this is because creative labor on the platform has been automated and deskilled.