Comment by cloverich

Build tools to make it easy for people to assemble their own chronological feeds that have quality UI / UX. IMHO the algorithmic feed's principle benefit is how easy it is for a user to curate something close to both what they want, and what they didn't know they want. We too often view things in terms of technical implementations and such, and lose focus on the core problems the user is actually having. Algorithmic feeds are great, because:

    - User installs app, opens it
    - User begins scrolling
    - Within a few minutes they have an endless feed of mostly interesting content

That is REALLY hard to do without an algorithmic feed, and there are a lot of problems when they subscribe. Not insurmountable, just easily underestimated. The motto I keep repeating to myself when I fall into a doomerism about the inevitability of the algorithm, I just say "Its time to build" and hope I can find something on the other side, if I keep digging. The principle weapon against the algorithm is, I think, not needing an infinite pool of profit. I.e. Facebook could build great apps that weren't algorithmic, but it is highly likely they would make much less money. So not only won't they, they literally _aren't realistically allowed to do it_. Its a crazy thing to think through.