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Comment by mastazi

9 years ago

I am increasingly at odds with the concept of curation. Youtube, Netflix, Google News, Facebook and many other web portals increasingly try to serve what "suits me" using sophisticated algorithms, but what if I don't want that? Every traveller knows that the best trips are those that you didn't really plan that much, which end up being an adventure. If you are driven by curiosity the unexpected is a blessing. For this reason I enjoy Astronaut and other projects such as GeoGuessr (https://www.geoguessr.com/) because they are a reaction to an overly curated, safe-space, no-surpises web experience.

4 comments

mastazi

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croon  9 years ago

I've been thinking of this problem ever since Google started serving up different search results for each person (which was a whole lot of years ago).

Sure in the beginning it adapts (according to some unknown algorithm) to what you feed it (in best case scenario who you are). I would however suggest that most people here are like me in that they every day try to learn and become less of an idiot, and thus incrementally grow as a person. I'm not the same person I was 10 years ago, and if I can't control how services see me (through my 10 year old history of my accounts), it will try to reinforce the me from 10 years ago, instead of showing me incrementally different results for the me I want to be tomorrow.

I'm sorry if this rant is confusing, I'm not sure how to coherently convey what I mean, but I'll try a TLDR;

If services only show you results/content based on how you were before, and force you onto a straight path (or rather, not even moving forward), isn't that what gets people stuck in echo chambers with only reinforcing information, never challenged, never growing?

  • mastazi  9 years ago

    > ever since Google started serving up different search results

    True, it was the same process for me, that's when I started looking for ways to avoid that, such as clearing cookies at every session or using incognito tabs; I was (unfortunately) working in the SEO space at the time and having personalised results was completely unacceptable.

    I find your comment not confusing and not a rant, your "10-years-ago-me" analogy explains very well what I meant with the "unplanned trip" analogy in my previous comment, except it's much clearer because not everyone is a traveller while, I guess, everyone is subject to the process of growing up and/or learning.