Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture

by Kyle Chayka

Attention becomes the only metric by which culture is judged, and what gets attention is dictated by equations developed by Silicon Valley engineers. The outcome of such algorithmic gatekeeping is the pervasive flattening that has been happening across culture. By flatness I mean homogenization but also a reduction into simplicity: the least ambiguous, least disruptive, and perhaps least meaningful pieces of culture are promoted the most. Flatness is the lowest common denominator, an averageness that has never been the marker of humanity’s proudest cultural creations.

Users changing their behavior can only go so far; we can’t trust that the mechanisms will ever prioritize our well-being over sparking more engagement that drives advertising revenue. Users can exert only certain kinds of agency within digital platforms. They can pursue a specific theme of content, for example, but can’t alter the equation of the recommendation algorithm. We don’t have enough alternative options to navigate the Internet outside of algorithmic feeds, in part because the Internet is now so dominated by just a few companies.

I must admit that my admiration for this period is driven in part by nostalgia. We all dream of that period of youth when the self is relatively unformed and encounters with art have a staggering power. Teenagers are more open to new experiences, regardless of what technology they use to consume them, and have the tendency and time to indulge obsessions, to become connoisseurs. But I’ve realized that what I appreciated so much about those online interactions is that they were built on person-to-person recommendations, not automated ones. Someone had to care enough to tell me what they liked, and I had to care enough to trust them and give it a fair try. Such cultural recommendations—communicating approval—are social and moral acts. We tell each other that we like things the same way that bees perform dances to pass on the location of a particularly fruitful flower. The very act brings us together.

There’s an axiom about the Internet that might have originated in a comment on the forum MetaFilter in 2010: “If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.”

There’s a time and a place for the kind of lean-back consumption that technology like Spotify radio or the TikTok “For You” feed encourages, but I worry that its fundamental passivity is devaluing cultural innovation as a whole, as well as degrading our enjoyment of art.

To resist Filterworld, we must become our own curators once more and take responsibility for what we’re consuming. Regaining that control isn’t so hard. You make a personal choice and begin to intentionally seek out your own cultural rabbit hole, which leads you in new directions, to yet more independent decisions. They compound over time into a sense of taste, and ultimately into a sense of self.