The algorithms are making us stupid

The 90s were the pinnacle of brain-draining television. When you didn’t have anything to do outside it was normal to spend afternoons with aimless channel surfing waiting for your favorite tv program to come live.

When internet went mainstream I remember it bringing a lot of enthusiasm. You were suddenly not only able to consume unfiltered content from other normal people like you, you could also create content yourself!

Our generation was very smug about this transition at the beginning. It was common to hear “No, I don’t watch TV” or even “I don’t own a TV!”. But we merely switched to even more addictive screens.

The web today is a trap of dopamine-fueled scrolling. Algorithms are designed every day to keep us hooked, and they’re making our feeds ever more mindless, our thoughts ever shallower. We can’t even spend a five minute commute without taking a look at our phones.

Remember the good old days when our social feeds were chronologically ordered, when content was presented in the fairest way possible? They’re all a faint memory now. Instead we’re being force-fed a menu of whatever the algorithm deems to be the most engaging content for us.

The incentives of companies are all wrong. Instead of the platforms being in the service of humans, their incentive is to keep us scrolling as long as possible. Even to our detriment. Teams at all the top companies use our emotional weaknesses to keep us addicted.

Take Twitter, for instance. It used to be a place for meaningful conversations, a place to share ideas, a place to follow your heroes. Now it is mostly cesspool of division and hate, driven by algorithms that promote whatever gets the most views. And this environment only attracts more of the same hordes of wanna-be influencers who optimize for the algorithm instead of their readers.

Twitter used to have a vibrant ecosystem of third-party apps that focused on the content. But they killed it by restricting their API so much until it suffocated every popular client app. Nowadays this is happening with Reddit.

Companies that early on supported open protocols are now walled gardens. Expecting ever-growing numbers means that they cannot afford sending anyone to the competition. They’re not prioritizing quality products, they are prioritizing retention rates.

Perhaps it's time we woke up to the reality and took back control of our digital lives, communication tools must be open protocols not under the control of corporations.