This is slightly off-track, but I felt compelled to share this opinion piece. The NYT published an opinion video featuring Jack Conte, musician and CEO of Patreon. The message is simple: algorithms should serve people instead of people serving algorithms.<\/p>\n
The piece reminded me of the times when you could reliably follow someone. These days, I see all kinds of content that I didn’t sign up for, and I miss the content from the people I thought I followed. I don’t even see the updates from my connections.<\/p>\n
As a workaround, LinkedIn wants you to “double follow” if you want to really follow someone. You need to visit a person’s profile and click on the unlabeled, literally hidden bell in the upper right to get notified when that person shares something.<\/p>\n
Isn’t that a little preposterous?<\/p>\n
The opinion piece suggests that we must:<\/p>\n
As a technologist, I agree. This may sound like a rant, but it really is not. I think Jack is doing an excellent job making people question the existing design (and offering an alternative?).<\/p>\n