fuckalgos.com

fuckalgos.com

hours humans have spent scrolling the feed since you opened this page

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KTA kill the algo

01 / how the money works

"Personalization" is a slot machine that knows your name

A handful of companies decide what billions of people see, think about, and argue over. They call it personalization. What it actually is, is a machine designed to keep your hand on the lever.

They don't sell software. Their product is your attention, and their customer is whoever pays the most for it.

Every screen, every notification, every tweak to your feed exists to keep you watching one more minute and reacting one more time. If it does, it ships. If it doesn't, it dies.

Nothing else is on their dashboard. Not whether it's true. Not whether it's good for you. Not whether you even liked it.

02 / the dossier

Big Tech does not just know what you said, it knows what kind of person you are becoming

The machine only needs a few numbers.

How long you stayed. How worked up you got. Everything else is enrichment.

Some of it is collected, most of it is inferred, and it does not matter which when the profile is good enough to move you.

primary score

Time stayed

How long you lingered, how often you came back, and whether the feed kept your thumb moving.

secondary score

Emotional heat

How strongly you reacted: outrage, envy, fear, tribalism, obsession, or compulsion.

output

Predictive dossier

A profile good enough to forecast what you will click, buy, believe, and become easier to move.

A person reduced to a behavioral dossier

name handles email phone number birthday or age range and preferred language whether you live alone with a partner with roommates or with children single dating newly engaged newly separated pregnant parenting or caregiving you sleep where you work how you commute and which neighborhoods you move through most often stores gyms schools churches clinics stadiums and airports that show up in your life repeatedly you are home when you are away when you travel and the hours you are easiest to reach you click how long you hover how fast you scroll where you stop what you save and what you abandon thumbnails stop your thumb which headlines you finish and what kinds of posts reliably pull you back in time of day you are bored lonely impulsive exhausted or most likely to keep watching you talk to most who you ignore who you secretly check on and whose approval changes your behavior creators friends group chats and communities shape your taste politics and purchases the people you know the people you orbit and the people you are trying to become you buy browse return name handles email phone number birthday or age range and preferred language whether you live alone with a partner with roommates or with children single dating newly engaged newly separated pregnant parenting or caregiving you sleep where you work how you commute and which neighborhoods you move through most often stores gyms schools churches clinics stadiums and airports that show up in your life repeatedly you are home when you are away when you travel and the hours you are easiest to reach you click how long you hover how fast you scroll where you stop what you save and what you abandon thumbnails stop your thumb which headlines you finish and what kinds of posts reliably pull you back in time of day you are bored lonely impulsive exhausted or most likely to keep watching you talk to most who you ignore who you secretly check on and whose approval changes your behavior creators friends group chats and communities shape your taste politics and purchases the people you know the people you orbit and the people you are trying to become you buy browse return

finance subscribe to and hesitate over bargain hunting doom spending job hunting moving planning a wedding or dealing with debt illness breakup relocation fertility graduation burnout or layoffs religion resentments fears aspirations and the status games that still work on you makes you angry ashamed jealous tribal comforted horny nostalgic or desperate for relief what kind of persuasion works on you when you are tired device model browser IP address carrier time zone ad identifiers and network fingerprints Sometimes your sleep schedule step counts motion patterns voice face and objects in your photos if you grant access whether you are in bed in traffic in line at work or half paying attention you are likely to buy next click next vote for next and who you are likely to become more like drifting toward conspiracy fitness obsession parenthood luxury aspiration radicalization or recovery to price your attention how to keep you on the hook and what stimulus is most likely to change your behavior finance subscribe to and hesitate over bargain hunting doom spending job hunting moving planning a wedding or dealing with debt illness breakup relocation fertility graduation burnout or layoffs religion resentments fears aspirations and the status games that still work on you makes you angry ashamed jealous tribal comforted horny nostalgic or desperate for relief what kind of persuasion works on you when you are tired device model browser IP address carrier time zone ad identifiers and network fingerprints Sometimes your sleep schedule step counts motion patterns voice face and objects in your photos if you grant access whether you are in bed in traffic in line at work or half paying attention you are likely to buy next click next vote for next and who you are likely to become more like drifting toward conspiracy fitness obsession parenthood luxury aspiration radicalization or recovery to price your attention how to keep you on the hook and what stimulus is most likely to change your behavior

03 / the discovery

engagement yield

rage

envy

outrage

humiliation

comparison

fear

joy

wonder

hope

kindness

It found out the worst version of you is the most profitable one

When you point a trillion-dollar optimizer at one job, keep humans staring at this rectangle, it gets very good at finding the things humans can't look away from. And it turns out the things humans can't look away from are mostly the worst ones. Fights. Humiliation. Outrage. Comparison. The feeling that the people you don't like are even worse than you thought.

The machine didn't pick those because it's evil. It picked them because they work, and nothing else was being measured.

04 / the human cost

The damage is emotional first, cultural second, political after that

Boys get fed resentment because resentment converts. Girls get fed impossible lives because comparison converts. Influencers get picked, rewarded, and replaced by a model that doesn't know what any of them are saying, only how long you stayed.

And after a while, everything starts to feel like something you're supposed to post about. Friendship. A bad day. A good day. The dog. The dinner. The diagnosis.

breakupspregnanciesfuneralsdiagnosesgriefsexsleepmealsworkoutsmeeting the parentstherapy sessionsapologiesfightsengagementsdivorcesbirthdaysbirthday parties for toddlersthe dog dyingthe cat dyinga parent dyingfirst dateslast datesmorning routinesnight routinesskincaregetting dressedgetting ready for bedcryingpanic attackssobrietyrelapsereligiondoubtvotingleaving the housemoving outmoving ina new haircutan old friendship endinga new friendship startingcommuteslunches alonewalksreading a bookcooking dinnera quiet weekenda hard weeka job offera layoffgetting olderbreakupspregnanciesfuneralsdiagnosesgriefsexsleepmealsworkoutsmeeting the parentstherapy sessionsapologiesfightsengagementsdivorcesbirthdaysbirthday parties for toddlersthe dog dyingthe cat dyinga parent dyingfirst dateslast datesmorning routinesnight routinesskincaregetting dressedgetting ready for bedcryingpanic attackssobrietyrelapsereligiondoubtvotingleaving the housemoving outmoving ina new haircutan old friendship endinga new friendship startingcommuteslunches alonewalksreading a bookcooking dinnera quiet weekenda hard weeka job offera layoffgetting older

things that became content

05 / two churches, same words

they want to take what's oursthey hate people like usthey teach our kids to be ashamedthey think we're stupidthey laugh at us in privatethey call us the bad guysthey're rewriting historythey have the mediathey have the schoolsthey're coming for the kidswake upyou can't trust anything they sayit's worse than you thinknobody is coming to save usthey used to hide it, now they brag about itour side has had enoughthey crossed a linesilence is complicityshare this before it's taken downwe are the last ones who rememberthey want to take what's oursthey hate people like usthey teach our kids to be ashamedthey think we're stupidthey laugh at us in privatethey call us the bad guysthey're rewriting historythey have the mediathey have the schoolsthey're coming for the kidswake upyou can't trust anything they sayit's worse than you thinknobody is coming to save usthey used to hide it, now they brag about itour side has had enoughthey crossed a linesilence is complicityshare this before it's taken downwe are the last ones who remember

they want to take what's oursthey hate people like usthey teach our kids to be ashamedthey think we're stupidthey laugh at us in privatethey call us the bad guysthey're rewriting historythey have the mediathey have the courtsthey're coming for the kidswake upyou can't trust anything they sayit's worse than you thinknobody is coming to save usthey used to hide it, now they brag about itour side has had enoughthey crossed a linesilence is complicityshare this before it's taken downwe are the last ones who rememberthey want to take what's oursthey hate people like usthey teach our kids to be ashamedthey think we're stupidthey laugh at us in privatethey call us the bad guysthey're rewriting historythey have the mediathey have the courtsthey're coming for the kidswake upyou can't trust anything they sayit's worse than you thinknobody is coming to save usthey used to hide it, now they brag about itour side has had enoughthey crossed a linesilence is complicityshare this before it's taken downwe are the last ones who remember

It gave every tribe the same enemy

Once the system noticed that anger held people longer than agreement, it started showing every group a slightly different version of reality. One that confirmed the worst thing they already suspected about the other side.

Nobody chose social fragmentation as a product goal. It just kept the number going up. And the number was the only thing being measured.

You are the product

You are the product

final signal

If the internet feels meaner, dumber, and more manipulative than it used to, that's because the machine got better at its job.

Merch is on the way.

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