Running for Your Life: WTF? Part One

Some reading passages rise up and slap you in the face – and you say, OK, this deserves a platform, as the kids are saying these days.

Such is the case in this chunk of the “Media in the Age of Algorithms” chapter in the book, “WTF?” by tech thinker Tim O’Reilly:

“Virtually every consumer-facing Internet service uses constant experiments to make their service more addictive, to make content go viral, to increase its ad revenue or its e-commerce sales. Manipulation to make more money is taken for granted, its techniques even taught and celebrated.

But try to understand whether or not the posts that are shown influence people’s emotional state? A disgraceful breach of research ethics!

There is a master algorithm that rules our society, and  … it is not some powerful new approach to machine learning. It is a rule that was encoded into modern business decades ago, and has largely gone unchallenged since.

It is the algorithm that led CBS Chairman Les Moonves to say in March 2016 that Trump’s campaign ‘may not be good for America, but it is damn good for CBS.’

You must please the algorithm if you want your business to thrive.”

Next: Running for Your Life: WTF? Part Two

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