Data Loyalty
Based on limited human input, companies like Facebook and Twitter attempt to figure out what content you want to see, to be your trusted filter. This does not always produce the desired results. Eric Myer, noted web design thinker, ran afoul of what he calls “Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty” when he opened FaceBook and got his algorithmically generated “Your Year in Review…” With a photo of his recently deceased daughter smiling at him. Eric was upset, saying in an article about the experience “Yes, my year looked like that. True enough. My year looked like the now-absent face of my little girl. It was still unkind to remind me so forcefully.” Algorithms cannot read emotion, only numbers. The algorithm could not have predicted that Eric would not want to see the most popular photo on his FaceBook wall that year. At least not today. How could it? So why don’t we just leave? Leave Facebook, Twitter, or any other filter that we grow dissatisfied with. It’s the same reason it’s hard to simply move houses when our neighbors annoy us: our how is where all of our stuff is, and our social media outlets our where all of our data stuff is. → https://www.ficklefutures.com/p/data-loyalty
