[hliyan]

One day, I hope we look at this period in history and marvel at the fact that our knowledge of current affairs was largely left to chance (or worse yet, algorithms that are designed not to inform but to sell) -- whatever happens to catch our eye as we scroll through our various timelines. With all the data, technology and query capabilities we have at hand, I'm surprised I can't set up preferences like this:

    drop sports
    drop celebrity news unless death or court case
    drop crime unless within state
    prioritise presidential election
    prioritise rocket launches
    prioritise aviation accidents

[Terr_]

> People bought personalized filter programs to skim a few droplets from that sea and keep the rest out. For some, subjective reality became the selected entertainments and special-interest zines passed through by those tailored shells.

> To avoid such staleness, Jen had hired a famous rogue hacker, Sri Ramanujan, to design her own filter. “Let’s see what happens to that list,” she said aloud, “when we use threshold seven, categories one through twenty.”

> “And the surprise factor, Professor Wolling?” Jen felt in a good mood. “Let’s go with twenty percent.” That meant one in five files would pop up randomly, in defiance of her own parameters.

-- Earth by David Brin

[solarkraft]

I REALLY want customizable recommendation algorithms. I believe a lot of people would like this and it would keep them on platforms more because it makes the experience more enjoyable.

[Terr_]

Thirty-plus years ago when that book was published, people (or at least techies) were more optimistic about how personal-computing would empower individuals with tools they personally owned and controlled and configured for their own benefit.

Unfortunately it feels more like we've ended up in the era of being relatively-powerless subscribers or digital-sharecroppers instead: Your "more enjoyable" experience is incompatible with what the corporation believes will maximize its profits.

[brightlancer]

> optimistic about how personal-computing would empower individuals with tools they personally owned and controlled and configured for their own benefit.

That's happened. The issue is most people don't _want_ to control and configure these things; they want to outsource that to someone else.

And that's where "influences" and "creators" and such step in: they're offering to sit in front of the firehose and tune things for their audience.

> Unfortunately it feels more like we've ended up in the era of being relatively-powerless subscribers or digital-sharecroppers instead

We have more power now, not less. Businesses can be parasitic, but that's not new. Media lying to the audience isn't new. We shouldn't idealize generations past -- it wasn't all rosy.

[Terr_]

> And that's where "influences" and "creators" and such step in

The idea that we're still individually-empowered by personal computing and have simply outsourced some of it to "peers who care more" is a comforting thought... but it doesn't seem match the current reality.

Most of those influencers/creators/curators etc. exist at the pleasure of large service-owners, who have their hands on the controls to boost/hide/de-monetize them based on whatever makes investors happy. Not just in terms of news and opinion (Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) but also tools themselves when it comes to the encroaching "app stores".

Following someone's self-hosted blog using a content-agnostic RSS reader is the exception now, not the rule.

[tunesmith]

I've had this half-baked thought for a while that the state of our world is based off of facts, values, and the various arguments/conclusions that emanate from them... and therefore the most newsworthy events are the events that have the "loudest" impact by propagating furthest through those argument graphs...