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Giving into the whims of the algorithm

Richard Haas
3 min readMar 4, 2023

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Drowning in a sea of online content, I’ve given up on trying to curate it myself.

A computer from the Apple TV+ show Severence (Source: Apple TV+)

Severance is a psychological thriller that was released on Apple TV+ last year. It was undoubtedly one of my favourite series of 2022.

In the show, we follow a protagonist named Mark whose brain has been split in half. Every morning Mark drives to and from work, but never experiences ‘work’.

This is because his ‘innie’, aka the version of Mark who only experiences work does it for him. ‘Inne Mark’ wakes up every day in the office, where he plucks away on his computer, not knowing what he is doing or even contributing to.

I don’t remember how I found it. I definitely didn’t find it by reading the entertainment section of the Guardian or the Times. I am sure that one way or another, the algorithm just fed it to me.

And I’ve recently come to terms with the fact that I’m fine with this.

The TikTok’ification of social media

Looking through your Facebook, Twitter or YouTube feeds in 2023 can feel very similar to how it felt in 2013. You see posts from friends, family and others who you follow.

Yet behind the scenes, these platforms have fundamentally changed. They’ve evolved from simple recommendation…

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Richard Haas
Richard Haas

Written by Richard Haas

I occasionally blog about tech.

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