The cattle prod of the algorithm

I have an uneasy relationship with social media since the days of Friends Reunited, it was hard to put my finger on it and I put it down to the nomadic nature I have with relationships.

Around five years ago I joined twitter and found lots of lovely people in my area with a passion for cycling. For some of those the bicycle was a big part of their life and they were advocates for this to be taken seriously as a primary mode of transport. They became targets for ridicule and attack - this was the rise of the breed of the keyboard warrior.

It was obvious that media was good at amplifying human nature both good and bad but for the most part it appeared to be in equal measure, like a normal distribution curve.

The constant adjustment algorithms was largely unnoticed but I begun to find I was only a few tweets away from advocates for cycling ranting and advocates for motoring pitted against each other. Abuse in word from was common place and then videos of people riding bikes being deliberately targeted by people driving cars appeared. I left twitter at that point. 

The algorithms have been good for a long time were good at herding us into different pens, and for the purposes of getting me to spend money, I’m fine with this. However, these days it’s a radical pen where we see through the fence and cattle prod pushes content to make me hate the sheep on the opposite pen. Many content creators appear to thrive on this for their own gain.

This is now permeating across various platforms, searches and websites. Bias is becoming more extreme, the normal distribution keeps shifting like a mirage.

It’s time to stop being a sheep and break free the pen.