Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture

by Kyle Chayka

In the mid-2010s, Los Angeles residents discovered that the map app Waze, which offered driving directions based on real-time data from other cars automatically filtered into an ideal route, was ruining otherwise quiet neighborhoods. When traffic was bad on the highway, the app would reroute drivers through residential streets in an attempt to get them to their destinations faster. “The algorithm is God,” a 2018 article in Los Angeles Magazine proclaimed. The trick worked while not too many people were doing it, but then it caused its own problems. The neighborhoods of North Hollywood and Studio City became crowded with cars and trucks, which got stuck on steep hills and tight corners. It turned out that the Waze algorithm was treating such smaller streets as having the same capacity as much larger ones; it made recommendations as if the streets could handle the flow of another hundred cars, though of course they could not. The traffic caused noise pollution and accidents, to the point that the local government began negotiating with Google to get the data changed. Neighborhood residents took to fighting back against the algorithm themselves, logging in to Waze to report fictional accidents and roadblocks, thus signaling to the app that an alternative route past their house wouldn’t save any time. Hacking the algorithm made an immediate change in their physical environment.