MK
@mkay
MK
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]
For most, the pleasures of digital cultural consumption are uncoupled from the exertions of curatorship. Today’s digital consumers are no longer being fed a limited diet of standardized cultural products, but they are still being fed. Consumption may be personalized, but it would be a stretch, in most cases, to call it self-directed — and it is
... See moreRogers Brubaker • Hyperconnected Culture and Its Discontents
TikTok enables and invites the pointed, witty, playful, allusive, zany and endlessly inventive combination of video, music and text. But the creative energies of its more than one billion users are circumscribed and channeled by the architecture of the platform.
TikTok’s spectacular success in enlisting consumers as producers depends on making
... See moreRogers Brubaker • Hyperconnected Culture and Its Discontents
... people just aren’t meant to talk to one another this mu ch . They shouldn’t have that much to say, they shouldn’t expect to receive such a large audience for that expression, and they shouldn’t suppose a right to comment or rejoinder for every thought or notion either.
Ian Bogost • The Age of Social Media Is Ending
Character is gone, because eccentricity is harder to duplicate and sell in bulk.
Dirt • Dirt | Substack
When I first got access to the internet as a kid, the very first thing I did was to find people who liked the same things I liked — science fiction novels and TV shows, Dungeons and Dragons, and so on. In the early days, that was what you did when you got online — you found your people , whether on Usenet or IRC or Web forums or MUSHes and MUDs.
... See moreNoah Smith • The Internet Wants to Be Fragmented
Flattening and taste
This was what personal style was to me in 2008: a cipher for something much broader, a glimpse into the lives of others.