Society, Technology and Culture

Recently, I learned about two conceptual lenses to look at current economic growth: “flourishing” and “extraction”. Once I learned about these terms, I found (predictably) that my various social media feeds were flooded with these concepts and ideas related to these concepts.

Not just that, but various people and channels I had been subscribed to seemed to “suddenly” be talking about this or adjacent ideas. Again, nothing new here, this is how algorithmic filtering works, but I hadn’t sat with the implications until now.

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Basically, friends and organizations I had known and have been following for years have been trying to tell me something… they had a whole storyline and narrative about economics and growth that I never received because of the algorithm.

Not only did I never receive their messages, I wasn’t even allowed to know this whole narrative thread, this whole way of viewing the world, even existed. Friends I know, groups I trust, all shouting a story directly to me, one I would have been glad to receive, that the algorithm decided I had no business knowing.

I can understand not serving me every ad in the world (yet) because of the noise that creates. But I realize that the opaque filtering takes it a step further… I don’t actually even get a filter bubble.

I don’t even get the consensus that my friends and social groups actually have amongst themselves. Instead I get a fraction of that. I get the sub-consensus of things I’ve already shown some interest in. If I’m not quick or attentive enough to pick up on them, I don’t get the collective social signal from my friends and communities saying “hey, this is something we think is important”. The ignored individual post hides the whole undercurrent of narrative threads.

It makes me wonder how many other narratives my own social circles are trying to share with me that I haven’t been allowed to know about.

This creates an even more insidious self-perpetuating horror show, which explains why online content is as awful as it is today.

If you’re a content creator and you put something out that “doesn’t get the views”, you then assume that the consensus of your audience is that this message isn’t one they want to hear.

But it could be that the idea is so novel to them that it was effectively pre-filtered away… the algorithm decided the audience wasn’t ready, and the content creator reacted as though it was the audience telling them that.

I want a report from Meta, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube and all the others. I want to know what my friends and communities have been trying to tell me. I want to see every narrative thread that these algorithms have decided are not worth me knowing. And I want to know why.

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