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sarkasmuz 's review for:
Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture
by Kyle Chayka
Since I am in the middle of my social media detox, a friend of mine recommended me this book. I have never highlighted so much in a book before.
While we are all consumers, some of us are artists (not content creators) and in a world where you have to compete with cat videos and memes, it gets more difficult for your art to be seen if it doesn't comform to "mainstream" art and content. It's not about the art itself, but about how it is presented and how good the content is. I realized I am a victim of the recommendation systems, as Kyle calls the algorithms and lost my personal taste - in the art and culture I consume but also in the art I make myself. I was asking, even before I read the book: "Am I drawing this piece because I want to or because I think a lot of people might like it and I get more attention?". The value of someone or their content (not their art) is measured by likes, views and followers and the real connection is missing on most of the social media plattforms these days. Which is sad, because I make art to connect with people. I consume culture to connect to others;
I found my way back to listening to whole albums instead of random songs on spotify, ditching the platform altogether in the future if I can find a way to digitalize my vinyl colleciton.
The way I intereact with music is the same way I did many years before spotify: I am intentionally searching for music.
Reading books and manga is one of my biggest hobbies. Most of the time I would try out books which are popular on social media, but I recently found myself browsing smaller bookstores and searching for particular genres or authors, to get to know their work or trying out new things.
In education we tell parents children learn the best if they can learn with all their senses. They need time and dedication to grasp the whole thing they want to learn. They are curious, open minded and not in their own filterbubbles, curated by algorithm controlled by big corporations (who have only more revenue in mind, not the user). They learn, in an open way, what they like and what they don't like, gaining their personal taste.
How much of your taste is truly yours, when an algorithm does the thinking and recommendation? Are you really liking those shoes which are suddenly trendy and all over your feed?`Do your really like that book, or do you think you should like it because it is popular?
I love the book. It's not saying the internet is bad. It's the corporate greed and the forced algorithmic recommendations, where you get to think it's your taste because "you might like" it. But at the end of the day those things you get recommended are just trendy and popular things, which generates a lot of data and income for the platform.
Anyway, this book will haunt me for a while.
Edit: And what fun it was, back in the day, to recommend things to your friends which you found randomly on the internet, because you thought they would like it. You started to discuss these topics passionatly, connecting to other likemindend people. Today you share stuff online, mostly to be seen, like everyone else. There are a lot of problems with algorithmic recommendation and it will get even worse with ai generation in the future. I am glad I am not on social media right now. I thought I was connecting to others, but in reality I did not. Their weren't many conversations, really. It is better to be on discord servers with like-minded people or sharing new findings with friends you already have. And since the social media world, or the internet world right now is just full (with a lot of bots btw), I find it nicer to be away and have finally time to play that video game or read that book.
While we are all consumers, some of us are artists (not content creators) and in a world where you have to compete with cat videos and memes, it gets more difficult for your art to be seen if it doesn't comform to "mainstream" art and content. It's not about the art itself, but about how it is presented and how good the content is. I realized I am a victim of the recommendation systems, as Kyle calls the algorithms and lost my personal taste - in the art and culture I consume but also in the art I make myself. I was asking, even before I read the book: "Am I drawing this piece because I want to or because I think a lot of people might like it and I get more attention?". The value of someone or their content (not their art) is measured by likes, views and followers and the real connection is missing on most of the social media plattforms these days. Which is sad, because I make art to connect with people. I consume culture to connect to others;
I found my way back to listening to whole albums instead of random songs on spotify, ditching the platform altogether in the future if I can find a way to digitalize my vinyl colleciton.
The way I intereact with music is the same way I did many years before spotify: I am intentionally searching for music.
Reading books and manga is one of my biggest hobbies. Most of the time I would try out books which are popular on social media, but I recently found myself browsing smaller bookstores and searching for particular genres or authors, to get to know their work or trying out new things.
In education we tell parents children learn the best if they can learn with all their senses. They need time and dedication to grasp the whole thing they want to learn. They are curious, open minded and not in their own filterbubbles, curated by algorithm controlled by big corporations (who have only more revenue in mind, not the user). They learn, in an open way, what they like and what they don't like, gaining their personal taste.
How much of your taste is truly yours, when an algorithm does the thinking and recommendation? Are you really liking those shoes which are suddenly trendy and all over your feed?`Do your really like that book, or do you think you should like it because it is popular?
I love the book. It's not saying the internet is bad. It's the corporate greed and the forced algorithmic recommendations, where you get to think it's your taste because "you might like" it. But at the end of the day those things you get recommended are just trendy and popular things, which generates a lot of data and income for the platform.
Anyway, this book will haunt me for a while.
Edit: And what fun it was, back in the day, to recommend things to your friends which you found randomly on the internet, because you thought they would like it. You started to discuss these topics passionatly, connecting to other likemindend people. Today you share stuff online, mostly to be seen, like everyone else. There are a lot of problems with algorithmic recommendation and it will get even worse with ai generation in the future. I am glad I am not on social media right now. I thought I was connecting to others, but in reality I did not. Their weren't many conversations, really. It is better to be on discord servers with like-minded people or sharing new findings with friends you already have. And since the social media world, or the internet world right now is just full (with a lot of bots btw), I find it nicer to be away and have finally time to play that video game or read that book.