The Web's Recommendation Engines Are Broken. Can We Fix Them?

Today, recommendation engines are perhaps the biggest threat to societal cohesion on the internet--and, as a result, one of the biggest threats to societal cohesion in the offline world, too. The recommendation engines we engage with are broken in ways that have grave consequences: amplified conspiracy theories, gamified news, nonsense infiltrating mainstream discourse, misinformed voters. Recommendation engines have become The Great Polarizer. Ironically, the conversation about recommendation engines, and the curatorial power of social giants, is also highly polarized. A creator showed up at YouTube's offices with a gun last week, outraged that the platform had demonetized and downranked some of the videos on her channel.