morayati
@morayati

(This was supposed to be the introduction to another post, but it got large and general enough to be its own standalone thing.)

If you've followed me for any amount of time, you probably know that I hate the phrase "the algorithm." Not the words themselves -- article then noun, can describe anything from weapons targeting to cookie baking -- but the phrase, the gestalt: The Algorithm. I am not being hyperbolic when I say I believe the widespread, uncritical use of the phrase "the algorithm" has done measurable damage to society.

First, and most obviously: Whenever you hear something like "our company uses an algorithm," or even "multiple algorithms," the proper response is "no shit, bro." Any technology of enough complexity to be called "the algorithm" -- the classic example being a recommendations feed -- consists of dozens, hundreds, thousands of algorithms, implemented and reused by dozens, hundreds, thousands of people. You are reading this right now because of layers upon layers of algorithms -- from the Cohost site, your browser, your network, your physical device and its various hardware components, and the thicket of sub-algorithms that comprise them all. (massive oversimplification, don't @ me) By moving your eyes in a specific winding path to understand these words, you yourself, your very body, is enacting an algorithm. The word means something!

More importantly: Whenever you see the phrase "the algorithm" (hereafter referred to as THE ALGORITHM) it is almost always shorthand for "decisions people made and structures people built that do things we won't discuss further." It's useful shorthand: sticky, because it flatters listeners' idealism (whether "technology always magic, you always mortal" or "people always good, technology always bad"), and safe, because it's too vague to run the risk of anything actually being done in response.[1]

Specifically, the phrase is vague about three things:


Intent: Years of deliberate, concrete decisions, the result of executing real, knowable strategies and business plans, are shoved inside the unknowable black box of THE ALGORITHM. That way, no one ever has to state or explain what exactly they did and how and why, through what means and to what ends.

Thus the feed at, say, Facebook becomes an unknowable organism that acts in mysterious ways, rather than a product that people made and know enough about to do deliberate tweaks and A/B testing on -- such as the infamous quasi-psychological experiment the company ran to see how much they could deliberately affect people's moods.

Responsibility: Decisions don't make themselves. People make them because they want something to happen, or were told to do so by someone else who did. But the specifics and logistics of what who wanted to happen and why, who actually made the decisions, what's done by employees, what's done by permatemps, what's done by subcontractors, and what's done for pennies abroad, etc., are all shoved inside the inhuman abstraction of THE ALGORITHM. That way, no one ever has to identify themselves as the one who did something or made someone else do it; THE ALGORITHM absorbs all accountability.

Thus content moderation becomes an "algorithm" that executes itself, rather than abysmally paid, psychologically brutalized people speed-watching the horrible shit other people post, scrambling to implement a decency rubric that other higher-paid people wrote, and doing an imperfect job both because of the breakneck pace and because other higher-paid people warn them to let things slide or else.

Sophistication: Jank, bugs, incompetence, institutional rot, bad data, quick hacks, "temporary" "placeholder" methods, and extremely blunt mechanisms are shoved inside the sleek chassis of THE ALGORITHM, where they look like the brilliant, omnipotent, inevitable crunching of infinite input. That way, the company gets to present itself as the mastermind holding the Eye of Sauron, and no one ever has to admit that this wasn't the only or best way to do things.

Thus TikTok's For You Page becomes the Freudian exhumation of your deepest desires, revealing for you the heady pulse of the world you never knew you wanted, and never something as simple as someone literally just pressing a Go Viral button to make stuff go viral.

The particularly insidious thing about invoking THE ALGORITHM is that saying it obfuscates these things whether you're involved or not. When the people making the bad decisions invoke THE ALGORITHM, what they mean to communicate is "if we said specifically what we are doing, it would make us look bad," and "it's not our fault." And when the people criticizing those shitty decisions use that phrase, what they may not mean to but nevertheless are communicating is "it's not their fault." Investigating further might be difficult, if not nigh-impossible[2], but the details revealed will generally be far more concerning than any "algorithms, man, remember when things were real?" thinkpiece could ever be.

In short, THE ALGORITHM is general, faceless, horrifying in an exciting, thought-terminating way, and inevitable. What is actually going on is almost always specific, done by someone with a smug face somewhere, horrifying but in a banal way -- and actionable.

[1] Footnote: see various congresspeople of both parties urging tech companies to "ban algorithms," guaranteeing those companies will never take them seriously in this hilariously impossible task; the actual bills are more specific but not by much.

[2] Footnote: See this piece in The Column: "Those who actually make the decisions remain protected like mob bosses, gently nestled between layers of middle management, lawyers, and marketing reps, impossible to reach by design. We can’t get mad at the corporation that’s delayed our flight, or “over-billed” (stolen) $400 from us, or removed a life-saving medicine from our insurance, or erroneously reported us to a collection agency, ruining our credit—because we can’t actually talk to anyone to get mad at. They’ve built up walls such that the only way to actually contact them is to retain an attorney and sue them. And even then you’re really only contacting an attorney."


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in reply to @morayati's post:

I have generally only used it when I felt like the topic was neutral or good--"the algorithm managed to churn up that video I was having trouble searching for" vs. "YouTube is showing children disturbing videos and doing almost nothing to prevent it".

But being a jokester isn't a good enough reason, so I'm going to try to change my habit.