We Can Never Beat the Social Media Algorithm, and That’s OK
But don’t count on lawyers or laws to fix any problems
What’s not to love about the platform economy?
We’re always connected, continuously receive new information, and can buy everything we want online.
And when the Internet and one or more social media platforms are down or not accessible, we feel agitated — nervous and cut off from family, friends, and community. The idea of being disconnected disrupts our lives. It disrupts businesses. It’s breaking news, as we have seen with Facebook’s outage this week.
But — and this is remarkable — we also take malicious pleasure in these outages. It almost feels like a relief. Finally, a moment for ourselves amid our busy digital day. No fear of missing out. Less peer pressure. No need to please the algorithm. No misinformation. No deepfake news. No harmful content. ‘Big Tech’ failure is a liberation.
We have unknowingly created a world that is dominated by algorithms. These algorithms are the brains of the social media platforms and they have us (humanity) figured out. Soon, they will know us better than we know ourselves. They already know we “love” sensation, and often also anger and hate. So, they are playing with our emotions. These “algorithms of emotion”…
