Andrea Jones-Rooy

And so you're just like, oh, like even these recommendation algorithms, even in the most neutral sense, they really homogenize our views.

And there's nothing more confusing than logging into someone else's social media and being like, what universe are you living in?

And for Jordan and me, it's neutral, but it's like, it could be very dangerous.

It's sort of like, one of the things I used to lament, I still lament it, but what stood out to me more when we first had the internet and you could go on websites and like buy a book or whatever, was I was like, oh, you're kind of missing the browsing experience.

You know, the going to Blockbuster, going to the library, going to a bookstore.

And looking around and just sort of, you know the sections, I'm going to go to the sci-fi, I'm going to go to this, but I'm going to kind of see a bunch of stuff at first.

Instead, the algorithms are kind of like, you walk in a door, they show you three different books and you pick one, and then they say, here are 10 more books like that one.

Here are 10 more books like that one.

So even if you don't want to be, and again, it could be a neutral rabbit hole politically, but it just, the algorithm is almost too cloying in that way.

Again, not just from a political standpoint, but from like a consumption of art standpoint, or a

exposure to different types or genres or something like that.

I know that people are out there trying to work on alternatives to the toxic social media cesspools that we often find ourselves in, but I don't think any of them have really gotten any legs.

But there are some out there that are trying to rethink this, where it's like, how can we expose you to more ideas?

How can we help you have more control?

I mean, these same researchers, one of their big talking points is that the minute... I forget which algorithm did it first.

Maybe it was Facebook.

The minute Facebook went from giving you updates based on like chronological updates, like whatever friends said the thing most recently that you would see that one.

And then if someone else said something, you'd see that one.

The minute they switched from that to the kind of like weighted what got the most attention, like some researchers trace the beginning of the end to that switch, right?

Like the minute you just separate from what your friends are doing to just talking about what's getting the most attention because it's almost always going to be more toxic.