Welcome to the dullness of an algorithmically curated world

At first, Spotify’s Discover feature is a joy. Every week one of Spotify’s algorithms scans everything you have listened to and generates a personal playlist full of similar music that you have never heard.

There is a catch though. A fascinating study of Spotify users by a group of computer scientists found that mainly listening to music recommended by the Spotify algorithm was strongly associated with listening to a less diverse range of music. The problem was that “high consumption diversity” i.e. listening to a wide range of artists and music, meant people were more likely to continue using Spotify or become a subscriber. It is only a small leap of extrapolation to conclude that people who make the effort to find new music on their own, as opposed to relying on Spotify’s recommendations, are getting more pleasure from the music they listen to.

Somewhat depressingly, but inevitably given that it is a computer science paper, the authors simply then move on to how to design better recommendation algorithms. Doesn’t this miss the point?  

If people who actively explore the music on Spotify to find new things enjoy themselves more it seems that surely part of the enjoyment is the act of exploration itself. Actively looking for something new both invites pleasant reflection on what you actually enjoy as opposed to simply consuming whatever the algorithm conveyor-belts to your screen. 

I would also guess the active searchers show broader tastes as exploring means experimentation. You try things without knowing what they really are and might suddenly find yourself enjoying something you would previously have never even contemplated. Algorithms, which inevitably can only work with what you give them, just aren’t able to replicate this. 

Nevertheless, the sheer broad convenience of algorithmic recommendation means its use is near universal. YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Airbnb – every click you make is recorded and used to spoonfeed you content that resembles what you’ve already consumed. In doing so it also shapes, and limits, your tastes. 

Much has been written about how this – in news terms – is contributing disturbingly to political polarisation by providing a constant stream of content that confirms your preferences while dissenting views are filtered out. As well as a recipe for extremism in other cases this system also seems to promote a bored passivity.

Now the pandemic means that this mode of existence has taken up ever more of our lives. 

While the pandemic means that many businesses have cratered, the biggest exceptions are tech companies. Amazon and Spotify have both enjoyed a stock price rise of more than 80% this year. Netflix has had a more modest rise of some 60%. Stuck indoors people were more reliant than ever on the big tech companies to provide them with content to stave off boredom – even if in the long term this fails to provide satisfaction. 

The lockdown has now ended in most parts of the UK but its effects are still felt. Social circles seem to have narrowed as people reduce the number of people they see and plot locations where it is safe to gather. The potential for daily interactions with people you might not otherwise associate with at work, at the pub or club, or even on public transport (outside London at least) is sharply reduced.  

With this goes the lost opportunity to be exposed to different views and people from different backgrounds. Even if not every encounter is pleasurable – such as those with pub bores or the irritating colleague – on balance something is lost.  

Much of the pleasurable, valuable, chaos of life is missing as we sit slumped at home flicking through Netflix recommendations while Spotify plays us the same album on repeat.