How TikTok Holds Our Attention
The way TikTok’s algorithm works is quite different from most of our social networks- “Some social algorithms are like bossy waiters: they solicit your preferences and then recommend a menu. TikTok orders you dinner by watching you look at food”. Recommendation algorithms give us what we want and provide content based on our individual interests. We become less and less likely to separate algorithmic interest and our own. I agree that this TikTok sensation will pass fairly quickly, since people do get bored of it and more and more similar platforms are coming up. While technology is being more customized/tailored to our interests, we should also be more cautious towards it.
Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty
Algorithms are thoughtless- even until now I still get birthday notification from some deceased ones on FB. I know now you can report a deceased person on FB and you can memorialize the account, in that way you won’t see the person on any public spaces- whether it’s suggested friends or any reminders. I assume this is how Facebook tried to implement the empathetic design.
Something is wrong on the internet
I’ve seen Youtube Kids very differently after reading a lot of articles about Elsagate (mostly from reddit/noSleep). But I never notice ginormous amount of videos like Surprise Eggs and Little Baby Bum. “What concerns me is that this is just one aspect of a kind of infrastructural violence being done to all of us, all of the time” I wonder why these absurd videos specifically target kids?
There’s a new obstacle to landing a job after college: Getting approved by AI
I never knew AI is also involved in the recruiting process. I feel like digitizing the process will expose more falses of the system- like what if someone hacked into AI and chose themselves as the candidates? I also wonder if the performances of the candidates chosen by AI are good? Maybe in the future, we will be interviewed by AI!
The problem with metrics is a big problem for AI
I love the analogy of junk food and recommendation algorithms because it’s accurate. Metrics are everywhere in our life now- but the impacts of metrics really depend on how we use them. I also find dark pattern interesting, it could be an interesting thesis for my research.