The Algorithm – how do we study it, how do we encourage it, how do we kiss its hand?
Are content creators today being treated like monkeys? 🤔
The Prison of the Algorithm
Content creators complain that algorithms are crushing them. Social networks respond that the goal of algorithms is for the networks to become increasingly convenient and useful for users. This sounds very noble; we’ll forget they don’t mention profit. We bravely assume that profit is merely a consequence of increased user satisfaction on the network. Bravo to the big players—the algorithms only serve the users, they don’t suppress anyone’s content, and they don’t encourage commercially profitable trends for the corporations.
Before we give up asking any more baseless questions, something strange catches our attention.
Aren’t there three sides to social networks? Besides the user and the algorithm, why don’t we consider the content creator? Are they forgotten because they’re not important or because they’re at fault in some way?
The audience is innocent; they just peek without responsibility. The trainer or the circus director is also an innocent figure; if you listen to him, he’s in the world only to bring joy to people and is only looking for ways to improve the conditions for that. In fact, if we carefully examine the creator’s situation, it turns out they are humiliated and trained like a circus monkey. The one who dances to the trainer’s tune and has to do monkey business to attract users is treated as if they’ve earned it. If they participate in the circus and continue to create, they must have a personal material interest, and the harassment they endure is considered acceptable.
The Three Sides of Social Networks
The Suitor Creator
What are we talking about? The creator must slowly and painfully learn how to please the algorithm; they must monitor and are obligated to love every feature of the algorithm. Then they can create 1000 works, but this doesn’t guarantee shared love for their dedication. They don’t just have to make quality content; they have to make it in the way the algorithm likes it, with the evidence the algorithm wants.
This is strongly reminiscent of totalitarian regimes where authors have the right to a creative life only if they follow the requirements of the “correct” ideological line, otherwise, they remain unpublished. To trust an author today, the algorithm also seeks evidence of whether the suitor creator is desired as a quality product by the majority, whether they are a universal choice. With every work, the author must be able to prove themselves on the spot.
Here is what is expected of creators:
- To learn how to please the algorithm.
- To monitor and love its every feature.
- To prove themselves with every work, on the spot.
How is this possible? For this purpose, it would be good to promise miracles, to show miracles, to seduce the unknown user with cheap tricks. This is again outside the realm of content creation; it’s about packaging, form, and tactics that you have to study to get the right to share content. You are forced to study the entire Internet, read thousands of pages, watch tons of videos, and often pay thousands of dollars to influencers to understand how you should create. You even learn what you should create, which makes your entire initial idea of sharing something of your own, something specific, meaningless.
The knowledge of how to touch and pleasantly excite the holy algorithm so it will deign to promote something turns out to be difficult and mysterious. If you have a problem with this, if it hurts your dignity, stay unseen. There are others who will play the game and are willing to be circus monkeys.
The Creator’s Insecurity
While tormenting themselves with questions about the meaning and how to become the perfect servant, the creator is subjected to algorithm changes every other day. At any moment, no matter what they’ve achieved or how much work they’ve put in, they can wake up to a ban and completely lose access to their channel. This reminds us of the “Hollywood Blacklists” in the 1950s, when artists lost their right to work due to hasty judgments and false accusations from those who supervised them. They might have done something outside the norms, but they might also have been correct—there is always a way to be compromised, outsmarted, to suddenly be non-compliant with the great algorithm or the rules that have changed as of today.
Social networks defend themselves by saying there is nothing complicated—you just have to create authentic, interesting, and useful content for people. How kind and harmless! However, the content creator on social networks serves the user the least. They serve the ubiquitous algorithm, following a set of written and unwritten rules, spread by word of mouth like a holy grail for success on the network.
We highlight the problem ➡️ It is not clear and publicly illuminated whom these rules serve, whom the algorithm serves—the users or the owner corporation?
The Algorithm’s Responsibility
We delve into the topic. We claim that the algorithm does not serve the interests of society. It begins with serving the mass taste, the average user, because this is financially profitable, as they are the most numerous. Yes, the mass taste is followed precisely for the purpose of maximizing profit. Thus, profit finally revealed itself from its hiding place, where some carelessly kept it out of the equation.
At this stage, the content creator, if they want to be promoted by the algorithm, must unlearn creating original content and accept the training to churn out established models and content that conform to existing, popular mass tastes and understandings.
The Content Creation Process in the Age of the Algorithm
Remember the image of Charlie Chaplin in “Modern Times” (1936) with a man turned into a cog in the machine.
The author now is not only subordinate to the general mechanism but must also avoid contradicting the laziness and prejudices of the masses. They must give up provoking people’s development, offering innovative solutions, or an alternative style. Everything must be offered in a palatable, light, short, and colorful form to get attention from the algorithm, as this is what the mass user wants.
Yes, but in this way, the content creator is trained by the algorithm that to succeed, they must satisfy and reinforce the shortcomings of the masses, not change and overcome them. The latter is in the public interest, in the interest of the individual, but this is not what is important to these types of media; only the mass presence that must be satisfied matters. This means the content must constantly sparkle with entertainment, simplify, and amuse at every second, providing digested, trendy food. If they want success, the creator must give up bothering, irritating the ear, or views. They have no right to be informative in a strict, disciplined way because that is boring and unnecessary for the masses, and therefore they will not even get a minimal audience from the algorithm.
The Hunger Games and the Way Out of the Labyrinth
They will accuse us of placing too high demands on social networks; they are not parents or a school. However, we are looking for honest clarity and the possibility of something more, an option that does not require neglecting the masses and reducing corporate profits.
We claim that the algorithm is not for the benefit of society’s development. It does not aim for improvement or development but only serves pre-formed, underdeveloped, backward views and preferences. The algorithm of social networks does not lead to social progress; its improvement only strengthens corporate profit, more precisely and frankly than ever. The algorithm encourages users to be as they are, in their most primitive form. For this purpose, it uses authors who are trained like Pavlov’s dog. The algorithm becomes another guardian and motivator for human weaknesses to dominate.
They fulfill this goal precisely while trying to be more and more convenient for the mass user. It is said, “we do not argue with users, we do not interfere with their preferences,” but the idea is that users would not challenge this game because they get what they prefer without knowing they are being diverted from receiving something better. It is assumed that creators would also not challenge the game and would be ready to humiliate themselves, pressured to become better at serving people’s weaknesses. Thus, content creators are subtly turned into circus monkeys, with the justification that they will not feel discouraged and humiliated because they use opportunities for fame and sometimes money in this game.
This is something like “The Hunger Games”—the participants are part of a humiliating game presented as an “opportunity for fame.”
The Niche – A Trap or a Refuge?
The recommendation for the more sensitive and refined, if they don’t want to “lower their level,” is to find their niche. They are told to calm down because there is a demand for high-level content, where they won’t have to change, adapt, or humiliate themselves. This, of course, is dust in the eyes.
The algorithm does help niche content find an audience and connoisseurs, but it traps it in a hole, a bubble, a snare with no chance of escape. The message is that this is where they belong if they don’t follow the mass taste.
Ultimately, neither do the masses get an outlet to something real, un-cliched, to something more, nor will the non-standardized content pushed into a niche help the masses in any way, because both have no chance of breaking through to the alternative. And this is the most terrible consequence, which George Orwell also talks about in “1984”—the control over information and thinking eliminates alternative thinking.
Is there a way out?
The higher, non-commercial goal of social networks and public communication should be to help positive flows and to overcome stagnation, alienation, and separatism. Albert Camus said that freedom is a chance to be better. We don’t see such an idea in today’s algorithms; we only see serving the user as an escape from development, dialogue, and new ideas. This means the user is served not in their long-term and deep goals and interests, but only in those that bring maximum profit to the corporations today. While “protecting” people from conflict and dissatisfaction, we also protect them from development.
The algorithm profits from the false world, whose bubble it further protects. In this bubble, users are happy to see only what makes things easy and fun for them, what they like and what confirms their way of thinking. This makes the masters of the algorithm the happiest because profit grows, as people stay longer in such a rosy world. Their justification is that if the algorithm were different, people would be irritated and would leave the network more easily, going to a competitor who doesn’t think humanistically.
Consequently, social networks have given up on high social functions and are promoting yet another means of escaping reality, which is a profitable business for them.
This philosophy comes down to the following:
- If you want profit, don’t help and don’t develop.
- Just feed the pathetic human understandings and interests.
- Only help the current, already-formed needs.
- Don’t suggest what is good and what is valuable.
This reminds us of the warnings from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451—what awaits us if knowledge in society is replaced by superficial entertainment.
It seems there is no way out!
There is. Imagine that social networks add a section or a parallel feed called “Alternative Preferences,” where they show opposing views and works that are not polished to serve the mass taste. Yes, they will not achieve the success of the creators trained by the algorithm, but will they not gradually intrigue a new, unexpectedly large audience and produce an unexpectedly beneficial influence on it? More space is needed for the formally careless and non-mainstream creators because this is in the interest of the individual and society.
As Erich Fromm says: “Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”
Authors: Ivan Sapundzhiev and Ralitsa Atanasova
