It is difficult to identify exactly when we lose control of what we see, read – and even think about – for the largest social media companies.
I got it right around 2016. This was the year that Twitter and Instagram joined Facebook and YouTube in the algorithmic future. Commanded by robots programmed to keep our attention for as long as possible, they promoted things that we would likely touch, share or target – and bury everything else.
Bye, feeds that showed everything and everyone we followed in an endless and chronologically organized river. Hello, high energy feeds that came up with mandatory clicks.
At about the same time, Facebook – whose news feed has been algorithmically controlled since 2009 – hid the setting to go back to “Newer”.
Not a big deal, you probably thought, if you ever thought about it. Except that these opaque algorithms don’t just maximize news of T. Swift’s latest album releases. They also maximized the scope of the arsonist – the attacks, the misinformation, the conspiracy theories. They pushed us further into our own hyperpolarized filter bubbles.