…wait until we all work for algorithms.
I’ve never thought about this until today, but I’ve worked for an algorithm during the entire life of my small business. The first algorithm that I have to please is the one that powers the google search experience. If my business falls out of favor with that algorithm I would have to either shut down the company or at the very least go to a 1 person company.
I also work for the Facebook and instagram algorithms. We want our posts to get in front of as many people as possible, so we really work these accounts and hope we’ve pulled the triggers that users and algorithms like.
I also apparently work for the Facebook Advertising Platform’s Account Shut Down algorithm, because they’ve shut our account down for no good reason multiple times. This isn’t something that just affects my business. Lots of legitimate businesses are being affected.
So right now I hate my Facebook algorithm boss. It’s the only way to access potential customers on Facebook and Instagram and for some reason the algorithm won’t allow us to do that any longer. It doesn’t tell us why, because if an algorithm told people why it behaved the way it does then it could be manipulated.
Some key things to know about algorithms:
once they reach a certain complication level even the people who wrote them don’t full know what they are doing
they don’t have any sort of “common sense”
the big companies that use them don’t pay enough real employees to deal with negative consequences of the algorithm’s actions.
they lead people to doing stupid things because they think it makes the algorithm do what they want it to do.
Basically algorithms and bad bosses are very similar except at least for now a bad algorithm is dispassionate.