Some recent discussion relating to Anil Dash’s overarching thesis of the Web we Lost. He’s also got some discussion related to algorithms and Weapons of Math Destruction. He specifically highlights the idea of context collapse and needing to preface one’s work with the presumption that people coming to it will be completely lacking your prior background and history of the subject. He also talks about algorithmic amplification of fringe content which many people miss. We need a better name for what that is and how to discuss it. I liken it to the introduction of machine guns in early 1900’s warfare that allowed for the mass killing of soldiers and people at a scale previously unseen. People with the technology did better than those without it, but it still gave unfair advantage to some over others. I’ve used the tag social media machine guns before, but we certainly need to give it a concrete (and preferably negative) name.

Bookmarked on December 06, 2019 at 09:54PM