The mythologizing of algorithms is fucking absurd to me. Like sure the algorithm for whichever social media company isn't openly available but it's pretty easy to guess how it works and many things have been written on the subject of how they work. Yet people are still out there just creating folklore about everything from why nobody engages with their posts to why your ads are spookily relevant when you can literally look up how this shit works.
It's also mesmerizing that for every person who is convinced their cellphone is secretly recording their conversations for advertizers they 1) don't turn off add tracking and 2) actively talk to digital assistants. Like i know i'm a paranoid cyberpunk hermit of a person, but it's hard to listen to fearmongering about algorithms while people let google rifle through their smartwatch fitness data and tell me "google already knows everything' when you suggest they put some basic privacy in place.
