Beware the Algorithm

All of the most popular websites on the Internet are designed to keep you there. YouTube's algorithm will show you videos like the last video you watched, and the homepage is full of videos that were chosen for you. Facebook mixes in randomly selected garbage with updates from your friends to make sure your timeline is busy and full. Twitter does the same, filling a feed with a combination of things you chose and things it thinks you want. Heck, even Netflix consistently shows you things it thinks you want to watch instead of, you know, the things you've already been watching.

Websites do this because their primary goal is to keep you on their website. YouTube, Facebook, and other free websites want you to keep spending time there so they show you more ads. Netflix wants you to keep paying, so they need to make it look like there's lots of content for you to watch. But they don't really want you to watch much since that costs them money, and they already have your money.

And it works. Endless scrolling, forever feeds filled with intermittent rewards of interesting, funny, or infuriating posts to keep you coming back for more. As long as my little rat brain sees something of value in one out of 20 or so posts, I'll keep coming back to read more, watch more, etc.

Short form content and emotional whiplash

The influence of algorithmic feeds on our lives has only gotten worse with newer forms of social media. Newer media like TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and really most things are designed to entertain you for somewhere between 10 and 30 seconds. Some longer content is on those platforms, but most is focused toward super short tidbits that make it easy to pick up, watch for 3 minutes (or 30), then move on without feeling like you're committing to anything long when you start.

I feel like these feeds are designed to give you emotional whiplash to keep you engaged. I get bounced back and forth between stand up comedians, parenting humor, parenting advice (that I really just never want), political something-or-other, and something random that's probably designed to make me feel some kind of way. I'm sure the whipping back and forth between topics and tones is bad for me in some way. And because the algorithm is a semi-random mix of all the things you've ever engaged with, there's no way to say "Hey, I'm not in the mood for political nonsense, today, but maybe tomorrow."

Back in my day

Way back in the olden days of the Internet, you picked which websites you visited and got updates from, and you got all the updates. The main way that happened was through a feed called RSS (Real Simple Syndication). Websites published a feed in a file, and feed reader program pulled those feeds and showed you what had changed since the last time you visited. And the beauty is RSS feeds still exist! And you can still use them.

I have a super short tutorial over at N2P, and I also link to others who put together more comprehensive instructions for getting set up with RSS, including subscribing to YouTube or Reddit communities. You could even subscribe to this site to keep updated with all the latest posts.

The joy of RSS is that it puts you back in control of what you see. You select specifically what you want to subscribe to, and you are shown only updates from exactly what you want, and nothing else. You still might have to wade through some things you're not interested in to get the golden nuggets, but at least you won't have a bunch of algorithmic trash thrown in on top.

Ultimately, I don't think the algorithm is all bad. Sometimes it's nice to chill and just scroll through a few reels or top stories or whatever. And the algorithm can show you things you wouldn't have found otherwise. I do think, though, that we should be mindful about how much time we're giving to the algorithm, and how much control it has over what we see and think about.

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