Day 202: Anti Algorithm By Design

2026-08-27Hello! This is an excerpt from Day 200, where I drafted a rant against the algorithmic apps that have changed people for the worse. I'm duplicating some of it here because the original article was long and cluttered. I hope this can be a cleaner version of the same text.I'll go right ahead and say that I don't depend on a personal algorithm tuned to my instincts and unconscious reactions. Instead, my biases are put in one by one through an RSS reader.Allow me to misuse a quote by Holmes Deng: "Smartphone users in China do one of three things... play games, watch short videos, or read web novels."Aside from web novels — let's replace it with texting or calling, perhaps? — that seems to be similar to the casual screen user in the US as well.I think we all ought to escape that. The phone is a tool like any other, and shouldn't be treated as the go-to choice to escape reality. People drive and text, and I've seen taxi drivers scroll through TikTok while they get me from point A…