Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture

by Kyle Chayka

To move forward, we must disentangle the effects of algorithmic recommendations as technology from the ways that we have habitually adopted them as the primary gatekeepers of our online communication. Algorithms, after all, are inextricable from the data they run on, which has been created and is constantly refreshed by humans. Actual influence coexists with the fear of influence, which is equally manipulative. Algorithms entered our lives by promising to make decisions for us, to anticipate our thoughts and desires. Filterworld represents the establishment of the psychic world of algorithms—not just how they work, but how we users have come to rely on them, allowing them to displace our own agency, even as we come to resent their looming presence.