An employee walks past a sign at Facebook headquarters in California. Credit: Jeff Chiu/AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.On a Thursday evening, while casually checking my Facebook profile, I came across an article on Social Media Today, an online marketing publication, boldly claiming to reveal the ‘truth’ about the algorithms behind social media and search engines.
“The truth is that algorithms know you better than you think. More than that, the best algorithms may actually know your likes and interests better than you do,” it claimed.
Algorithms, the article went on to explain, are the craze of the day. From Facebook to Google, any respectable online content provider invests in developing programs able to record and analyse users’ online activities in order to further push content upon them. The revelation here is that such programs are getting better and better at knowing us. Companies using them have seen their sales increase – allegedly a result of algorithms showing people the right type of content. In other words: “The truth about algorithms is they work”.
