The Problem With Every Site Using The Algorithm

Summary

You Will Not Escape The Algorithm
Do Not Scroll Away. The Aglorithm Already Knows You.
It Knows All And Sees All.

The Algorithm knows all and sees all. It knows us better than we❀ know ourselves. Before we have thunk a thought, The Algorithm has thought it for us and🎐 provides content to satiate.

Dystopian nightmare that is technology understanding every facet of our personality aside, most of the time this works pretty well. You curate your feed on whatever online platform you're using, The Algorithm assists by providing similar content, and the relationship feels symbiotic. But what happens when you hate your own Algorithm?

The Algorithm Learns What You Like, And Gives You More

For the most part, The Algorithm understands me. On Twitter (X just isn't happening, let it go), it knows that I mainly use the platform to see what my peers in games journalism are writing, to see what surpri🅺se song Taylor Swift plꦯayed this weekend, and to keep up with football news, particularly in the Premier League and, more particularly, about Newcastle United. Since the arrival of Elon Musk it appears to think I have a special interest in rage bait and racism, but this is clearly the sign of the platform fishing for engagement🌄 and can thankfully be largely ignored.

My Instagram Algorithm is similar - I'm less interested on the more influencerised gaming content there, but Taylor Swift (and general celebrity content) and football feature heavily. Just dudes being bros asking each other quiz questions about which cartoon character is the tallest or what the best fast food company with blue in their logo have also been served to me by The Algorithm, and I chow down every time.

I don't use TikTok, but have been told many times that it has the most impressive (or perhaps terrifying) of all The Algorithms. Just a few scrolls on TikTok and it knows your blood type, it knows your dreams, it knows your phobias, it knows what lint lurks between your toes. Since most of the stuff I see on Instagram is comprised of reposted TikToks, I can already guess what The Algorithm would send my way, but the fact we're so aware that companies have huge servers that just includes a list of ways to manipulate us and consider it a selling point of any given app shows how much The Algorithm has taken over.

There Is No Escaping The Algorithm

Though there is a frightening underbelly to being perceived so clearly by The Algorithm, as thoughts of how it can be used 168澳洲幸运🎶5开奖网:beyond funny reels of Taylorღ Swift memes spiral in my head (Cambridge Analytica's voter manipulation was essentially The Algorithm used for politics), it ultimately makes day to day life easier. There are many content creators, posts, videos, articles, and from that links to music, games, and movies, that I would not have discovered without a machine saying 'I know you. You like this' and making sure I saw it. At its best, The Algorithm is like that friend who sends you a movie recommendation and delivers banger after banger every time.

However, when The Algorithm goes wrong, it is near impossible to untangle. I discovered this recently wꦛith Pinterest. For some reason, Pinterest seems to consider itself a true social media site, in the same way that Letterboxd sometimes talks about itself, rather than facing up to its own reality. Nobody is scrolling through Pinterest endlessly, day after day, week after week, looking for things to interact with. It is used far more specifically than that.

For some people, they may use it for ideas for home renovations. For otꦜhers, as a digital scrapbook for planning a wedding. I have used Pinterest fairly casually for both of these purposes in the past, and in these cases, The Algorithm worked. When I was looking at ways to set up a TV cabinet in the front room that is longer but༒ narrower than most, The Algorithm provided ideas after I had sourced a few myself. When I designed my own wedding stationery, The Algorithm soon understood the assignment. But then I started using it more, and it all fell apart.

As I've written about many times before ('too many!' comes a dissenting voice at the back), I write my own 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons adventures. I use a lot of character art both to inspire ideas and to show my party, and over time, the natural destination for this be🏅came Pinterest. At first, The Algorithm worked as usual. I built cities that needed a specific look, and The Algorithm understood. I moved from location to location, changing my search terms, and The Algorithm obliged.

But eventually, my taste got in the way. The Algorithm is supposed to respond to this taste, but Pinterest's became far too aggressive. I like to have diversity in my games, of art style, species, skin tone, and gender, and so that often meant selecting the odd one out. If you search for 'D&D Knight character art', most results are white men. I don't want just white men in my game, so I would often click on the women and/or people of colour to add them to my pile of inspirations.

However, I still wanted some white men, but The Algorithm has deemed me no longer worthy. Just now, I tried 'male D&D character art', 'fantasy character man', 'D&D masc hero', and 'Dungeons and Dragons Sir', and in all cases, there was at least one female portrait in the first ten. Searching 'dnd character' gave me the first ten results as women and the 11th was a cat. The Algorithm now influences your searches, not pulling the best responses for what you were actually looking for, but guessing what you really want to look for and giving you those instead.

Not to mention, somewhere along the way I have clicked on one too many AI pieces and thus half the results I get now are computerised slop. Ultimately, I'm not going to lose any sleep if some AI slips in unnoticed amongst the literal hundreds of online character art pieces I use in each adventure, but The Algorithm has now decided that I seek this out. That in being fooled once by an AI anime elf I must now live with the express purpose of seeing ugly cartoon gnome with seven fingers.

Maybe it's just Pinterest's use of The Algorithm, but I'm not sure that's true. It's more like The Algorithm needs to be maintained. As a symbiotic relationship, it needs constant interaction from you to avoid going berserk. Use it seasonally, and it gets restless and malicious, overreacting to everything you say and do. It turns from a truly symbiotic relationship into a parasitic one. It knows exactly what you like. And, apparently, it knows exactly how to hurt you.