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]
It’s a genre of content I like to call “Type of Guy” syndrome, where people on the internet create a mostly fictional straw man to represent a certain kind of person they dislike and then project it onto the one in front of them.
Vox • Every "chronically online" conversation is the same
It’s that these reactions are so normalized online that they’re almost boring.
Vox • Every "chronically online" conversation is the same
Compulsion had always plagued computer-facilitated social networking—it was the original sin. Rounding up friends or business contacts into a pen in your online profile for possible future use was never a healthy way to understand social relationships. It was just as common to obsess over having 500-plus connections on LinkedIn in 2003 as it is to
... See moreIan Bogost • The Age of Social Media Is Ending
The inherent contextlessness of platforms like Twitter also works in the opposite direction, though: It’s easy to use the language of social justice to justify anything we want, and by doing so, weakens real, meaningful activism.
Vox • Every "chronically online" conversation is the same
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
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
It’s never felt more plausible that the age of social media might end—and soon.
Social media was never a natural way to work, play, and socialize, though it did become second nature.
The shift began 20 years ago or so, when networked computers became sufficiently ubiquitous that people began using them to build and manage relationships. Social
... See more