Algorithms are toxic

This is the sixth post in my 'hitting the digital brakes'-series. These are the previous posts in this series: the joys of imperfection Do we really need the latest tech My e-reader made me a worse reader Not everything needs to be in the cloud Anti AI? Be Pro Human! I have a highly curated feed on Instagram, and when I'm there I only check the stories and the feed posts of the people I follow, usually not spending more than five minutes at a time in there. This time, I let myself fall into the arms of the algorithm, just to see what would happen. I dove into the For You page. I first tried it without Adblock. Boy oh boy, it was a hellscape, filled with things perfect looking people with perfect white teeth in their perfect white mansions who wanted to sell me the perfect thing to make me as perfect as them. So I turned on Adblock and tried again. The for you feed was perfectly tailored to me. Every single post was like the few people I follow. Nothing irritated me. I giggled at…