.5 - "Algorithmic Complacency"

2025-02-24

Last week I talked a bit about RSS and how I was using it to manage the streams of content that I want to keep up with, and during this week I've been slowly chipping away at the massive subscription list that I've built over the years on YouTube and and picking a few channels that I want to keep up with, and among those channels was Technology Connections [YL Link] and by pure chance Alec had just uploaded a video titled "Algorithms are breaking how we think". I heavily recommend that you give it a watch if you haven't already.

In short, that video talked mostly about recommendation algorithms and how an increasing number of people seem to delegate choices (like what to watch next) to computer algorithms, Alec called this "Algorithmic Complacency".

I'm not going to copy/paste the whole script of that video here (so you really should give it a watch), but that video really struck a chord in me, it managed to put into words and articulate a lot better than I ever could a lot of what I was feeling about how the modern web seems to operate, on my first post on this blog I described the modern web as "an homogenized corporate hellscape were everything and everyone is trying to profit of you and your attention", but what I hadn't realized is exactly what was discussed in this video, personal agency, back then when I was perusing through the world wide web I chose which links to click trough, I chose how long to stay in each page admiring the contents, I chose when to surf the web, but with the advances in technology the websites slowly started to be able to choose for us, and we allowed them to do just that, after all what bad will a couple of suggestions do? We can still choose no to follow those suggestions.

Maybe that was true when these algorithms were first introduced, they were just a tool to facilitate discovery of content that we might not have decided to look for, but now, pretty much every pixel of a webpage is designed to keep you engaged, to keep you watching video after video, scroll trough post after post, all without thinking about it because the algorithms decide what you will see next. And we've gotten so accustomed to it that we started to forget that we can look for stuff, that we can make stuff, most of us seem to have forgotten that the web is an open platform, anyone can make their own silly space, even if modern social media websites make it look like they are the only options.

Without realizing it, back in December when I first stumbled upon the plethora of different independent websites that made me create this very one where you are reading this, I got a taste of that personal agency that was missing from my life on the web (in addition to my hate of all the tracking and privacy invasion), it feels infinitely better to chose to browse some coll unique websites than to mindlessly scroll trough an endless feed carefully crafted to keep your eyes on the screen. And now that I realize this I am not going back to mindlessly following algorithmic recommendations, from this point forward (to an extent I had already started in January) I am going to put active thought behind every piece of content that I decide to engage with, be it a forum post or a YouTube video.

Anyway, what have I been up to

During the week I mostly did some planing for the weekend and the little projects that I talked about on the last post, I don't have much time free during weekdays as I spend a lot of it working on my hobbies and (trying to) socialize. But it was still pretty productive as that planing gave me a head start on saturday morning to start doing something useful with my time. (And also made me realize a flaw with one of my plans for a project that I will get to in the coming weeks)

So I spent most of saturday mounting six new power outlets and a light on my workshop that I had planned for about four months ago and reorganizing some things around here to accommodate for those additions.

Then on sunday I took some much needed time outside, I had lunch on a restaurant and a lovely walk on the mountains were I took this photo (Lovingly edited with GIMP):

Then when I got back home I decided to setup homeassistant on a Raspberry Pi 4, very straight forward setup, burn the image onto an SD Card, plug the Pi in and follow the instructions on the web UI, then get lost configuring every little detail for 8 hours straight. I am not kidding, The only reason I didn't write this blog post yesterday is because I lost track of time while messing around with homeassistant, when I realized what time it was I didn't even have time to read a bit or practice the drums like I wanted to.

Jokes aside I am really liking it, I have managed to configure every smart device I owned super easily and most of them now work entirely locally without needing to talk to their manufacturer's servers (except Tapo cameras/outlets that for some reason still need me to log in with my TP-Link ID, which is annoying and will make me not buy from them again), so now I'm mostly in control of my devices and how I interact with them, and even how they interact with each other in ways that were not possible previously so that is really cool.

And that is pretty much it for this week, that's two things knocked out of that list, still have not decided what I'm going to do this week but by next week I should have something more substantial to show, until then I hope you have a nice time.