The Problems of Personalization
I wrote this piece in October 2013 on my first blog ( have a play around to see other old work)
When we see the world now with extreme views normalized, the rise of Trump and Brexit, the inability to find common ground, I have strong memories of how it was clear a while back that algorithms would do this.
We may want a varied diet of content, of both the Fiber and the Sugar, but we crave what satiates us the fastest and it was always going to be clear where this would take us, even in 2013 and then this is 2015. At that time I wanted to make an app called "Dipidy", with the idea of showing us ideas, people, events and more that would show us how other's see things and to escape the clear forces that make us narrow in life. Wish I'd take it to Facebook now.
Personalization is making us boring, stupid, predictable and intransigent. From 2013
One of the best things about the internet has surely been the level of access and the level of personalization.
Now, seemingly in any location on earth we can watch any film we want, read any newspaper, listen to any radio station.
And we won't get swamped by all this, because whether it's Facebook, Netflix, Quora, Yahoo news, Groupon or most other services online, it's all designed to use clever algorithums to show what it thinks what we want.
Here are some big issues.
- It tends to reinforce who we are.
Recommendation engines constantly funnel our lives into tighter spaces. If we tend to click on articles on the Times about technology it will show more of those articles to us. If we don't seem to like right wing friends on Facebook, it won't show us those friends activities. It does this automatically and without our permission. It's not at fault or morally wrong for doing this, but the affect of all this is to allow people to live lives more comfortably not been showing others points of view, or more varied fodder to fertilize our brains and ideas.
In a world with pretty much unlimited content, in order to maintain a fairly manageable diet, we will soon be shown only things that are clearly at the very center of what it thinks we find interesting, and since we'll be shown nothing outside of this to broaden the funnel, we may have to try hard to see others viewpoints or to expand our brains.
- It tends to show us crap, when we need substance.
These same clever algorithums notice the thinks we click on most quickly. Most people in life have things they think they ought to see ( long form articles about Palestine, obscure documentaries about overfishing) and content they tend to have quick urges to snack on, but that have no meaningful content. As people we know we need a healthy balance of both, but the issue with reccomendation engines is they notice only what we appear to have urges for, and not what we want to watch, but never feel like. I'm sure the long term affect of this is that way more involving, interesting, fertile content will be replaced by a never ending stream of bitesized links to Miley Cyrus dancing, "Things people in LA say" and other such crap.
- It removes the chances of interesting things.
People are inherently curious and adventurous. One of the best things about the internet is that it's opened our minds to doing things we may never have thought about. But increasingly as sites begin to learn what it seems we may like, access to things that are more interesting, more obscure. I don't want Groupon deals for things I know I like, I want deals for things I didn't even know about and to try new things. All these engines seek to reinforce our experiences and lives, when it's good for us to constantly explore new things we may not like.
I'd love to see sites move away from reccomendation based approaches only and introduce a balance of things we think you'd like, things we think you'd hate but why not try and random things.
In fact I have an idea for the anti reccomendation social app, rather than all the apps in NYC that tell you about events you'd like based on past behavior, I want an app that tells me everyday about one thing I'd never normally hear about or think about doing.
Here is the idea.
Tomorrow Innovation Agency New York
Lead CTI Analyst | Meme Intelligence
6 年Meanwhile, (and this is based on my own experience) you have Amazon and Spotify who are great at suggesting new things I would never have thought about. Whether it's similar or related books on Amazon, or new bands/genres on Spotify, I appreciate that level of personalization because I've found things that are amazing. Sometimes they lead me down rabbit holes of further discovery, and suddenly my search for old darkwave music has led me to Algerian jazz. It's serendipity at times. It would be nice if Facebook and other similar media could do that. The only way I've found to combat the doldrums there is to just continue expanding the social circles and gain more diversity of thought, which is something I did well before social media was a thing.
Vice President Customer Experience at Domino North America
6 年When public libraries eliminated the card catalog system and replaced it with keyword search, the user experience changed. In the ancient times, the 1980s, part of the joy of visiting the library was finding notes written on the cards by librarians providing more context. The ability to flip through the cards gave the user an experience to find additional books, on the same subject matter, by the same author, or with a similar title. Some of the serendipity was reengineered out of that search process when we look by keywords today. Who goes to a library today? Who reads real books? Some still do. The library never made recommendations based on past search results, or how many cards I flipped through. How do we create technology that can deliver that serendipitous experience?
Partner Success Manager
6 年I love how some people get carried away with tech solutions to your ideas Tom and trying to add to your idea instead of just enjoying it for what it is. And the irony that you are just downloading your ideas in public. Or maybe it’s just me ??