I’m tired of algorithms. And you?

Question

Social media give us what “we want.” But actually, do we know what we want? Maybe it’s better to provide us with a chance to discover something new?

The world is so predictable for us, so likable.

I want products that give me a chance to get another experience and broaden my world. And you?

Kasper Kerem · Accepted Answer

This problem has many layers. Let's take a twitter example, every second (if all text) there are 120k pages worth of tweets. It makes 600 books worth of text every second. Meaning there has to be some sort of algorithm made available to orientate in this data. And this is only one platform. 
From a service provider and content creator perspective, you want to have revenue and popularity. Again, you need some kind of algorithm there, but this is where it gets biased already. 
One more challenge for the algorithms is content/context-awareness. There are over 6000 languages, thousands of cultures, over 7B individual mindsets and personal preferences. There is no algorithm available that can serve so many variables. And we do see problems with that on daily basis. "this post is not following our community standards" is one of many examples. Anyway, from a technical perspective is easier to make algorithms to change people - what they see, how they behave, what they buy, etc... And this is hairy, to say the least. 
So to answer the question, we do need algorithms, but we need them less controlling and biased. But easier to say than do

Kasper Kerem · Answer

@yaroslava, in reality what has happened is that we all have learned helplessness. We just are too comfortable and let the algorithms feed us. Books, libraries, domain specific websites and blogs, podcasts, videos are still out there. But in whatever reasons we tend to wait them coming to us, not we looking and finding them. I would suspect that most people on many platforms will not even use search functionality.

Yaroslava Antipina 🇺🇦 · Answer

@kasper_kerem very interesting point of view. Respect it.

But how do we resolve the problem with "sticking' to preferences & not broadeding people mindset? We live in the ocean of information & knowledge, but do we become cleverer?

We're happy that websites/SM give us what we want. But at the same time they decide what we want)) The point you mentioned too.

A lot of questions in me head.

Yaroslava Antipina 🇺🇦 · Answer

@iamgoconnor unfortunately TikTok creates the world where you have a chance to win without a lot of efforts (just a lottery to success). People "kill" their valuable time.

But yes, TikTok is an algorithm winner now.

shaik ikbhal Basha · Answer

I am tired of remembering algorithms, revising

Graeme O’Connor · Answer

I think Tiktok does a pretty good job at this actually, at least compared to most of the other platforms!

I’m tired of algorithms. And you?

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