It’s hard to identify exactly when we lost control of what we see, read – and even think – for the largest social media companies.
I put it right around 2016. This was the year that Twitter and Instagram joined Facebook and YouTube in the algorithmic future. Led by robots programmed to keep our attention for as long as possible, they promoted things we would most likely touch, share, or cherish — and buried anything else.
Goodbye, feeds that showed everything and everyone I followed in an endless, chronologically ordered river. Hello, high energy streams that appeared with mandatory clicks.
At the same time, Facebook – whose news feed has been driven by algorithms since 2009 – has hidden the setting to return to “Latest”.
No big deal, you probably thought so, if you thought about it. With the exception of these opaque algorithms, not only did it maximize the news about T. Swift’s latest album drops. They also maximized arson coverage – attacks, misinformation, conspiracy theories. They pushed us further into our own hyperpolarized filter bubbles.