Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture

by Kyle Chayka

You may not use social media, but it’s using you. —Eileen Myles

Algorithmic recommendations shape the vast majority of our experiences in digital spaces by considering our previous actions and selecting the pieces of content that will most suit our patterns of behavior. They are supposed to interpret and then show us what we want to see.

Designed and maintained by the engineers of monopolistic tech companies, and running on data that we users continuously provide by logging in each day, the technology is both constructed by us and dominates us, manipulating our perceptions and attention. The algorithm always wins.

look-alikes, including one by Amazon itself. Filterworld culture is ultimately homogenous, marked by a pervasive sense of sameness even when its artifacts aren’t literally the same. It perpetuates itself to the point of boredom.