How to Avoid Becoming a Victim of the Algorithm

Since I was in my early teens, weekend mornings were a time set aside for leisurely perusing all the sections of the newspaper.

I also love magazines and used to have several magazine subscriptions.

Now I receive everything digital.

There are obvious benefits to digital: less clutter, less environmental destruction, I can bring dozens of magazines with me on a trip without being weighted down, I can save articles to my digital folders.

That said, there are many benefits to the physical print format that get lost in the digital world.

Most obvious is that I can’t easily scan or see “all the news that’s fit to print.”

The algorithms decide what to show me.

Unless I intentionally set out to uncover all the articles in an issue, it’s likely I won’t see a good number of them.

Algorithms shape what we see and read in almost every realm of our consumption experience — from news to social media.

Including our own thoughts.

We think thousands of thoughts a day. Did you ever notice, however, that a small handful keep repeating?

Those repetitive thoughts are like the news articles and social media posts that keep popping up in your feed.

They can trick you into believing that this is the universe of stories, that this is all that is important.

But you don’t need to fall for that. You don’t need to be a victim of the algorithm. You have agency.

For example you can choose to seek out other stories. You can go to a profile of someone you like to view their feed.

The same is true for the contents of your mind.

The first step to not being a victim of the algorithm is simple awareness that what you’re seeing or hearing is a product of the algorithm.

You always have the power to seek out other stories.