Of algorithms and anxiety

1. Algorithmic Anxiety

I experience something I like to call algorithm anxiety when going through any feed because I know every action I take on there is being logged and will be used to change the landscape of my home page the next time it refreshes.

It doesn’t even have to be a click. The mere act of scrolling, stopping while scrolling, viewing something for more than a few seconds, clicking like or share — it is all being watched and logged by unseen machine eyes and filed away for later use.

For once, I would like to wander without being worried about someone judging my every breath online. Even when I am looking at a newsletter in my inbox, there are trackers logging the act of opening the email. This act will show up in the sender’s stats page where I will get a star rating based on how often I open the email and how many times I click on the links in the emails.

A lot of these logged signals are translated into data points that are then sold to third parties who will decide what ads and promotions I am exposed to in the days to come. I spoke to a friend about a food item the other day over the phone and was then presented with ads for the same in a matter of minutes. It is unnerving.

I am a child of the early internet. When we used to speak of engagement, we imagined people talking to each other, getting exposed to each other’s ideas, and hopefully building something out of those interactions. It seems we missed something, because engagement now means little more than engagement with ads.

This isn’t what I signed up for.

2. AI and Authority

I frequently write about generative AI from the perspective of a writer. Occasionally, a chirkut engineer with the mental horizon as wide as a his dick will ask what gives me the right to talk about tech when I am not from a tech background. Here is a list of reasons for the unfortunate soul.

1. We all have a tech background now. If nothing else, we can very authoritatively talk about our relationship with personal tech like smartphones, social media, algorithms, and now gen-AI. No one needs a certificate from you to be able to discuss their own experiences and observations.

2. The writer was happy just writing. He didn’t have to talk about your precious AI. You dragged him into it when you plagiarised from him and his people. Because of this, you left him no choice. He will now talk about AI and you will learn to live with it.

3. I personally have been online for more than two decades now. I was one of the first Twitter users of India and have seen platforms and tools and practices rise and fall like the tides of time. I’m pretty sure that qualifies me to at least have an opinion on what is going on right now, especially because, as pointed out before, it all directly impacts me and my ability to do my work.

4. As an engineer with little understanding of sociology or history, it is easy for you to float away in the sea of hype and propaganda about AI that is shoved down all our throats by big tech. After all, that is the only lens you have been given to see the world with. For those of us who have gained our perspectives by looking at larger social trends, doing so proves harder. I wish I could be as gullible as you, I really do. But life and experience has made that harder.

This is a stub. I will write a longer version of it next time.

3. Escaping the Algorithm

Substack is leaning into video so heavily, I am reasonably certain it is going to become an Instagram or a Twitter before 2025 is over. While that may be a good thing for the company, it is quite possibly not why many writers initially signed up for it.

I am starting to use Substack in a different way now. I am treating publications on it like blogs of yore and using a good old fashioned RSS feed reader program to read them. The one I am using is called Raven Reader — it is a free windows download and you can get it from ravenreader.app

To the young ones among you who don’t know about RSS feeds, it’s a protocol that is at the foundation of most feed-based websites. Back in the day (early 2000s) everyone used to read blogs and news websites using feed readers. Google even had a huge one called Google Reader. Another one was Bloglines. A lot of these no longer exist. Websites don’t advertise their feeds either. But feeds still exist and work.

Using a feed reader lets me read not only multiple substack publications in one place, it also helps me read news websites like ToI, HT, The Hindu, all of which have RSS feeds.

The age of social media platforms killed RSS feed usage. I think it is time for it to come back. It’s a great way to beat back corporate capture of information access.