Dear Algo Shenanigans

I’m looking for someone to tell me I’m wrong here. Then we’ll laugh together. At the moment I’m laughing alone at what I believe is a masquerade that’s hiding the ball while promising social media users new capabilities. According to reports, Threads, Instagram, and TikTok are offering ways for users to tune their own algorithms, providing better control over what they see in their feeds. That’s the masquerade. I’m sure users will have a ball jumping at the chance to fine tune their feeds. That may indeed prove beneficial, but the way I see it this is just a way for Meta (Threads and Instagram) and TikTok to fine tune user preferences for better and more specific data collection and targeting. I love this quote from the TechCrunch article: The shift reflects an evolution in how recommendation systems work. Social media feeds are moving away from a one-size-fits-all TV channel and toward something more like a streaming service, where users can tune recommendations to their interests…