Thoughts on algos

Are you using them consciously or not?

A lot of people write things like “we live in an algorithm-powered world.” And, this is true to a good extent: algos decide what search results you see when you’re looking for your next vacation (if you didn’t already know precisely where you wanted to go). They decide your social stream based on what other people already engaged with that day. If you use an online dating app, they even decide who you’ll date and later marry/have kids with, determining what the future of humanity looks like. That escalated quickly.

Today’s post isn't here to pass judgment on where you get your information — or your mate. Or saying you should stop using algos entirely, certainly they have utility. Instead, it’s to consider more carefully how you allow algorithms to influence various aspects of your life and decide things for you. This infiltration raises questions about the balance between agency and automation. How deliberate are we in choosing where and when we permit algos to make decisions or at least tier information for us? Given there’s so much worship at the alter of optimization without thought, I sense not much. The world is made worse, if not simply dumber, to pay no consideration here. Let’s talk about a few areas.

Finding information

The internet, once a chaotic and sprawling repository of information, has been neatly ordered by algos. Need to know the capital of Burkina Faso? Or the historical significance of the Battle of Thermopylae? Algorithms ensure that your answers are just a few clicks away. In this context, they seem like benevolent librarians, guiding you through the vast tomes of history and human knowledge. Search algos used to be this way, and for awhile were very good.

But not only are they actively being made worse, there’s a catch. The same algorithms that bring you answers not only can bring you biased results, but also shape the questions you ask. They learn from your behavior, predicting what you’re likely to search for next, subtly nudging you towards certain topics while pushing others into obscurity (if they rank them at all). The result is a curated version of reality that might reflect your interests, but not necessarily the truth. It’s a filter bubble, and while it’s sometimes helpful — streamlining the vastness of information into manageable bites— it can also be dangerous, narrowing your worldview and reinforcing biases (whether your own or from a company’s ‘safety team’). I think for things with a very transactional nature, search algos are obviously still great with few drawbacks (like finding a chicken noodle soup recipe to make for dinner tonight). For other topics, not so much (Wikipedia tends to rank highly in search and is edited by a small group of very biased humans, who all lean the same way politically).

Surfacing creative things like music

When it comes to discovering new music, algorithms are useless for me. Sure, they can analyze listening habits and suggest songs you might like based on patterns of tempo, genre, and even emotional tone of music. But creativity isn’t just about these patterns. And any of these algos are heavily biased to the slop produced by big music or simply reinforce formulaic stars, keeping you mentally trapped. It’s an area I know and care deeply about and so am personally against using complex or biased algos for any of it. I simply do not trust code here, and the results are subpar compared to recommendations from friends or scouring the new release sections (sorted by something very simple like release date or genre) from digital music shops like Beatport. I even go to physical vinyl shops which force a reintroduction of serendipity. I sense the more you understand something the less you want a team you don’t know working for a company with lots of bias thousands of miles from you deciding your world. The results will always be unsatisfying. Music is a programming language with root access to human OS, if you take such a thing seriously perhaps you should take greater care here, too. I care enough here to manually curate selections of music to try and break friends free from letting machines decide their reality. Maybe I can free you as well? Humans are just better at certain things, and it’s even enjoyable work the wise might wish to keep.

News/blog posts/ideas surfaced in social

For news and ongoing ideas, the influence of social media algorithms is particularly insidious. They don’t just suggest articles—they prioritize them based on what will keep you engaged in the short term at the cost of all else. This often means pushing sensationalized or emotionally charged content to the top, feeding into the cycle of outrage and confirmation bias that defines so much discourse today. They also outright downrank hyperlinks, basically neutering any benefits here, breaking how the internet should work. Social media has now in many ways taken the worst things trad media does (they are obsessed with sensationalism and frequently won’t link out either).

However, there are moments when the algorithmic curation can be beneficial. A well-timed idea or news article (even just the screengrab, since you frequently won’t get a link) aligned with your current interests or concerns, can spark an idea for a story, something useful if you’re a blogger like me. But these moments are the exception, not the rule. More often than not, algorithms exacerbate the worst tendencies of online media, creating echo chambers and polarizing communities.

What to purchase

In online shopping, algos are both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, they can anticipate your needs with uncanny precision, suggesting products you didn’t even know you wanted but now somehow can’t live without. This can be a time-saver, cutting through the overwhelming abundance of choice in a digital marketplace like Amazon.

On the other hand, this same predictive power can be unsettling. When algos know you better than you know yourself, you have to wonder about the implications for free will and consumer autonomy. Are you making a choice, or is the algorithm making it for you? The answer, as with so many things, is likely somewhere in between. They also can be annoying, suggesting more of something you already just purchased. This illustrates how imperfect this technology is, and why you should still shop with your brain turned on.

Videos/YouTube/NFLX

I actually don’t hate the YouTube algo (whereas I loathe the Spotify algo) and here’s why. YouTube was initially created for online video sharing, and ignoring what some clueless people write, it was never about ‘piracy’ it was always interesting because it was something new (and better). YouTube is truly an internet content native product, whereas Spotify is a big music product. SoundCloud is much closer to YouTube, which is why I make it my music home on the web (not to go back into music again too much). The ethos of these products is just different, and so are the content libraries and algos. Again there’s a case to be made the closer you are to something, the less interested you are in having algos make decisions for you. If you think deeper about what this means you’ll reconsider a lot of what is presented to you served by opaque machine decisions. Netflix algos might be fine, given you’re within a curated big media company universe, so all ideas are homogenized to a good extent here already and it’s just passive entertainment (whereas YouTube has iconoclast creators who would never be ‘chosen’ by the NFLX content team, but an algo might still surface them). Of note, the YouTube algo is markedly better than TikTok or other text-based algos at surfacing legitimately interesting ideas vs slop.

Quick wrap…

Algos have woven themselves into the fabric of our lives, guiding decisions in subtle and pronounced ways. Understanding this, we should be conscious of when and where we allow them to take the reins. In many cases a simple sort by date or category might be superior, ‘tech lindy’ even. You know what you’re getting and why.

And while sophisticated sorting or suggestions can make our lives easier, they should never replace our capacity for critical thought and seeking genuine human creativity on our own. A constant desire to make things easier is a thing making your life worse, as I’ve stated before. Asking a friend who is passionate about something frequently yields better, or at the very least different results that expand your world. Maybe you could even start to care about something like music or video enough to create it yourself? It all depends what type of life you wish to lead. Regardless, I would spend time more time considering this topic as it’s clear most do not.