I hope this pressure leads to just getting rid of algorithms altogether. It’s like intentionally giving everyone their own personal echo chamber. How are people ever going to be open to different ideas if they’re constantly being pigeonholed by their browsing behaviour? How will they ever have opportunities for practicing critical thinking if everything is spoonfed to them? How many real human beings have we unintentionally ignored online because an algorithm decided they weren’t interesting enough to us? These are all things that have the potential to prevent a tragedy. Humans are capable of being more than the sum of their clicks if we let them.

The world is bigger than our own interests and I think it deserves even just a crumb of our attention too. Then maybe the world can become a little less devastating.

Maybe this is some 5D chess move against the rise of penguins

I gotta hand it to them, they are very good at marketing to potential voters. All I’ve learned is that the average voter can only be reached with bright colours, 3 words or less, and constant repetition. People don’t have the attention span for much more than that.

Those ads work. My 60yo mother told me, “I don’t know much about him but he just seems sneaky to me for some reason.”

And then I later saw the intentionally sinister red-washed ads and it all made sense.