I've always respected your principled stance on quality videos/tutorials. Social media incentivizes really unhealthy dynamics between creator/viewer we all need to proactively resist.
One of the really good things about social media is that it allows people to connect to each other that otherwise might never find each other.
The bad part is that this process is often opaque and can change in a way that, if you are trying to make money using it, you can end up really getting screwed.
I suspect that, for the most part, the algorithms are doing whatever they were designed to do. It's just that the motivations of the companies (Amazon, YouTube, etc) no longer align with the needs or motivations of content creators.
For instance, a while back, the YouTube algorithm rewarded people with more viewers for making shorts and punished those who didn't comply. Why? Because if people watch a bunch of shorts, they are shown more ads than if they watch a few longer videos of the same combined length. Therefore, YouTube gets more ad money. However, many content creators quickly learned that they themselves were not gaining more profits from shorts than they would from long videos. Only YouTube was. But if these creators decided to ditch shorts and focus only on longer videos, the algorithm punished them with less viewers, even for their longer videos.
I have a suspicion that a few years ago, Amazon started to almost regret creating a self-publishing service. In theory, all they have to do is sit back, let authors publish their books, and let their share of the money roll in. But after a while, the site got flooded with so many self-published books that it got harder and harder to program their algorithms to keep the marketplace optimized for readers to find books that they would be satisfied with. So why spend all that time and expense when it's more profitable to let (or intentionally make) the search algorithm unwieldy and nigh useless, then charge authors so much money to have their books show up in searches and recommendations that in some instances, Amazon makes as much or more on the ads than on book sales?
These algorithm changes, as much as they might seem random to one on the outside, almost always ensure that the house always wins.
Incidentally, the theme of this post reminds me of the 1940 Harry Bates story "Farewell to the Master" (later loosely adapted into the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still"). The story is about an alien named Klaatu, who is killed by a trigger-happy Earthman while making first contact. Klaatu's green, eight foot tall robot Gnut has the ability to recreate creatures from recordings of the sounds that they make. At the end of the story, he is about to recreate Klaatu from a recording of his voice, when the human protagonist of the story tells Gnut to tell his master Klaatu (once he has recreated him) that the assassination was a mistake. Gnut responds, "You misunderstand, I am the master."
I think the crappiness is part of the monopoly. When you own the whole market, you don't really need to have to be great anymore.
Plus by making the real results driven by ads which use special keywords means you don't need regular searches, and in fact it is advantageous to avoid making them functional. That way authors have to spend ad $$ to show up in searches (which they have to figure out how to engineer).
Once monopoly is achieved, a company usually moves to raise prices. Amazon didn't do that to customers, but by increasing their cut of royalties from authors and publishers, but on paper it's "advertising" not an increase in royalties.
I really appreciate this conversation and how open you are about it all. It’s easy to get caught up in the false promises of fame and fortune from people claiming to teach you how to work the algorithm and the exact right method to gain views... problem is, as you said, the algorithms are constantly changing and there is no way to ever know if you’re actually doing things right.
Social media is now the main/only feasible advertising channel for small businesses or creators, and it’s essentially useless.
I'm a bit jaded by seeing how many authors make their bank selling "author services" that boil down to how to manage an algo, which may not work at all (depending on your books) or may be out of date even by the time you take the course or read the book (or whatever).
They figured out the real way to make money is to take it from people rather than game the algo, so why would anyone take their advice seriously?
Yup. My first question anytime I see someone selling a "how-to" is whether or not they themselves are making money in the same way they're teaching others how to make money. Most of the time, they aren't actually authors or artists or real estate tycoons or small business owners - they were just able to gain enough of a following telling other people "how to do it". I don't know why that sort of content continues to be so highly popular.
Excellent take on this. It's important for us to be clear-eyed about this topic. When we work as content creators, ultimately we end up as vassals of the almighty algorithm.
It's not destiny. The problem is that most solutions (alt-tech, neo-patronage) are win more strategies. It's too hard to avoid the robots right now and connect with other people. Too much friction, but it can get better and probably will.
Preaching to the choir. Facebook and Twitter are both throttling impressions in service of the algo. At least with FB I got a notice that they were no longer going to recommend my page to others because I wasn't posting enough! I hate FB. I used to like Twitter, but now it's just Musk's doomsday toy. BlueSky is ok, but a bit of a liberal echo chamber - a good social media should have a range of views. But social media has been a hard sell for promoting creativity for a long while. How are you finding Substack as a means of people discovering you? I'm still finding my way on it and wondering how to use it. Completely agree on Amazon - it's now basically pay to play (with amazon ads).
I am not sure when it happened, somewhere in the last 5 years, that the internet began to yield less beneficial results. For years I was blessed with getting more and more specific and niche content that I enjoyed and was unaware of. Now, I feel that the quality is diminishing. As more and more products are managed by machine learning, the product inevitably is becoming less useful and engaging. The internet used to feel like a wide open world to explore, now it feels like seven websites getting progressively worse.
Not only that, but it used to be a hideout from the stresses of real life; now it's the worst parts of real life amplified and the only escape is the middle of the woods or desert.
Insightful. I'm grateful for others like yourself who can testify (from bitter experience) that my intuitions about the algorithm-pleasing game were correct. I think of the slavery dynamic portrayed in Genesis 31 and Exodus 5 (among other places in Scripture) in which a fickle tyrant constantly changes the rules with no regard for transparency, much less for fairness. I'm also reminded of Jesus' admonition about wisely choosing where to lay up treasure--i.e., where to invest time, talent, hope, and desire.
I've always respected your principled stance on quality videos/tutorials. Social media incentivizes really unhealthy dynamics between creator/viewer we all need to proactively resist.
One of the really good things about social media is that it allows people to connect to each other that otherwise might never find each other.
The bad part is that this process is often opaque and can change in a way that, if you are trying to make money using it, you can end up really getting screwed.
I suspect that, for the most part, the algorithms are doing whatever they were designed to do. It's just that the motivations of the companies (Amazon, YouTube, etc) no longer align with the needs or motivations of content creators.
For instance, a while back, the YouTube algorithm rewarded people with more viewers for making shorts and punished those who didn't comply. Why? Because if people watch a bunch of shorts, they are shown more ads than if they watch a few longer videos of the same combined length. Therefore, YouTube gets more ad money. However, many content creators quickly learned that they themselves were not gaining more profits from shorts than they would from long videos. Only YouTube was. But if these creators decided to ditch shorts and focus only on longer videos, the algorithm punished them with less viewers, even for their longer videos.
I have a suspicion that a few years ago, Amazon started to almost regret creating a self-publishing service. In theory, all they have to do is sit back, let authors publish their books, and let their share of the money roll in. But after a while, the site got flooded with so many self-published books that it got harder and harder to program their algorithms to keep the marketplace optimized for readers to find books that they would be satisfied with. So why spend all that time and expense when it's more profitable to let (or intentionally make) the search algorithm unwieldy and nigh useless, then charge authors so much money to have their books show up in searches and recommendations that in some instances, Amazon makes as much or more on the ads than on book sales?
These algorithm changes, as much as they might seem random to one on the outside, almost always ensure that the house always wins.
Incidentally, the theme of this post reminds me of the 1940 Harry Bates story "Farewell to the Master" (later loosely adapted into the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still"). The story is about an alien named Klaatu, who is killed by a trigger-happy Earthman while making first contact. Klaatu's green, eight foot tall robot Gnut has the ability to recreate creatures from recordings of the sounds that they make. At the end of the story, he is about to recreate Klaatu from a recording of his voice, when the human protagonist of the story tells Gnut to tell his master Klaatu (once he has recreated him) that the assassination was a mistake. Gnut responds, "You misunderstand, I am the master."
RE: Amazon
I think the crappiness is part of the monopoly. When you own the whole market, you don't really need to have to be great anymore.
Plus by making the real results driven by ads which use special keywords means you don't need regular searches, and in fact it is advantageous to avoid making them functional. That way authors have to spend ad $$ to show up in searches (which they have to figure out how to engineer).
Once monopoly is achieved, a company usually moves to raise prices. Amazon didn't do that to customers, but by increasing their cut of royalties from authors and publishers, but on paper it's "advertising" not an increase in royalties.
I really appreciate this conversation and how open you are about it all. It’s easy to get caught up in the false promises of fame and fortune from people claiming to teach you how to work the algorithm and the exact right method to gain views... problem is, as you said, the algorithms are constantly changing and there is no way to ever know if you’re actually doing things right.
Social media is now the main/only feasible advertising channel for small businesses or creators, and it’s essentially useless.
I'm a bit jaded by seeing how many authors make their bank selling "author services" that boil down to how to manage an algo, which may not work at all (depending on your books) or may be out of date even by the time you take the course or read the book (or whatever).
They figured out the real way to make money is to take it from people rather than game the algo, so why would anyone take their advice seriously?
Yup. My first question anytime I see someone selling a "how-to" is whether or not they themselves are making money in the same way they're teaching others how to make money. Most of the time, they aren't actually authors or artists or real estate tycoons or small business owners - they were just able to gain enough of a following telling other people "how to do it". I don't know why that sort of content continues to be so highly popular.
Excellent take on this. It's important for us to be clear-eyed about this topic. When we work as content creators, ultimately we end up as vassals of the almighty algorithm.
It's not destiny. The problem is that most solutions (alt-tech, neo-patronage) are win more strategies. It's too hard to avoid the robots right now and connect with other people. Too much friction, but it can get better and probably will.
Maybe we should all be doing conventions again.
That sounds like it could be really effective; add more of the human element back in.
The problem with the machine isn't that it enslaves but that it breaks down.
Cameron promised us glorious AI apocalypse where skynet sends metal skeletons to murder us in our beds.
The real collapse will be like getting your toe stuck in a trash compactor that won't turn off.
"I'm sitting in a dark house because google went down."
"Alexa! Turn off car and open garage door!!"
Preaching to the choir. Facebook and Twitter are both throttling impressions in service of the algo. At least with FB I got a notice that they were no longer going to recommend my page to others because I wasn't posting enough! I hate FB. I used to like Twitter, but now it's just Musk's doomsday toy. BlueSky is ok, but a bit of a liberal echo chamber - a good social media should have a range of views. But social media has been a hard sell for promoting creativity for a long while. How are you finding Substack as a means of people discovering you? I'm still finding my way on it and wondering how to use it. Completely agree on Amazon - it's now basically pay to play (with amazon ads).
I am not sure when it happened, somewhere in the last 5 years, that the internet began to yield less beneficial results. For years I was blessed with getting more and more specific and niche content that I enjoyed and was unaware of. Now, I feel that the quality is diminishing. As more and more products are managed by machine learning, the product inevitably is becoming less useful and engaging. The internet used to feel like a wide open world to explore, now it feels like seven websites getting progressively worse.
Not only that, but it used to be a hideout from the stresses of real life; now it's the worst parts of real life amplified and the only escape is the middle of the woods or desert.
Insightful. I'm grateful for others like yourself who can testify (from bitter experience) that my intuitions about the algorithm-pleasing game were correct. I think of the slavery dynamic portrayed in Genesis 31 and Exodus 5 (among other places in Scripture) in which a fickle tyrant constantly changes the rules with no regard for transparency, much less for fairness. I'm also reminded of Jesus' admonition about wisely choosing where to lay up treasure--i.e., where to invest time, talent, hope, and desire.