MK

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.

Researchers have found instead that the distribution of attention remains highly unequal across a wide range of digital contexts, ensuring the hypervisibility of a few and the invisibility or near-invisibility of the great majority. The winner-take-all (or winner-take-most) logic, sustained in part by algorithms that ratify and reinforce what is

Social media showed that everyone has the potential to reach a massive audience at low cost and high gain—and that potential gave many people the impression that they deserve such an audience.

A democratic cultural politics would be developmentalist — oriented to learning, growth and discovery — rather than presentist.