The allure and dangers of algorithms

Like many people, I spent the winter holidays reading books. Unlike most people, I couldn’t stop thinking about local news.

The book I spent the most time reading was called Filterworld: How Algorithms Flatten Culture by The Atlantic columnist Kyle Chayka.

It’s a detailed dissection of how algorithms shape the world around us, by pushing and tugging in certain directions based on digital signals, essentially destroying the very uniqueness of what we seek out and like, in favour of the sameness of the algorithm’s recommendations.

Ever wondered why many coffee shops look the same in every city? Blame the Instagram algorithm, as coffee owners herd towards uniform and “popular” designs in order to drive more visitors.  

He writes how Spotify, the popular music service, doesn’t actually recommend music based on your interests but focuses on a small sliver of songs, making it harder and harder for people to discover new things and develop their own tastes. 

As we’ve hit the ground running this year here in Vancouver, and announcing the hiring of our first employee Nate, I can’t help but think about how Filterworld algorithms are shaping local news. 

Take, for example, discovering a new local restaurant. Owners have to shape their restaurant design and food to quickly catch attention when scrolling social media. Media outlets frame a story around a viral dish. The quality of the food? Forget about it. Good places without a strong Instagram feed are ignored.  

Local journalism stories skew more towards what drives clicks and eyeballs, funded through banner ads. That means viral headlines, quick hit pieces and a shift away from longer, in-depth stories that actually explore and shape important issues. Publications need traffic, and the algorithm delivers. We’ve all seen too many of these types of stories here in Vancouver…

The media industry has substituted journalist tastes — their insights, on-the-ground research and hunches that shape what gets written — for some vague algorithmic sugar fix, focusing on the stories that get shared and less on stories that shape lives in Vancouver.

The journalists get this. But many of the companies they work for don’t. Fighting the algorithms isn’t easy. But local news, especially, has to resist the urge to become like the same coffee shops in each city.

As the Lookout rolls into 2025 with our first employee and a vision for what we want to cover, I’m keeping Filterworld in the front of my mind. 

We’ve resisted the urge to offload our editorial direction to the whims of the algorithm. Nate pursues local Vancouver stories that he thinks readers need to know. I review restaurants based on the quality of food, not what the Instagram algorithm prefers. And I never look at page views or virality to determine if the Lookout is successful.

When I meet with Nate to discuss story ideas, we let the tastes and interests of our journalists, the feedback from our readers, and the problems of our city, shape what we cover at the Lookout. We can do this because we’re mostly reader-funded, not based on the whim of traffic from an algorithm.

I won’t lie — forsaking the algorithms is the right decision, but it’s risky. We’re missing out on visibility. We’re cutting off certain revenue streams. Fewer people see our stories. And we can’t grow as quickly as we want, even though we’d love to hire even more journalists.

But Filterworld’s world impact on local news offers a cautionary tale of what can happen when we get too far away from journalism. Just look at the layoffs and shuttering of local outlets across Canada. Sure, other things are to blame, too. But algorithms and lack of trust in journalism publications are a big part.

Publications put algorithms in charge when we forget that at its heart, journalism is about people, the reporters who write stories, the locals impacted by those stories and readers like you wanting to be informed. These can’t be flattened into an algorithm.

I’m not a big believer in New Year’s resolutions. It’s hard to radically change your trajectory with a promise at the beginning of the year, committing to a big change to improve everything.

Luckily, we’ve been charting a path without the algorithms since we started the Lookout. So, I will break my rule about not making resolutions by making a promise to all of you.

Our promise is simple — this year, and every year after, we won’t be tempted by the algorithms, clickbait stories or viral restaurant reviews, and we’ll trust journalists and team members to tell you the local stories that matter.

The siren song of the algorithms is real. But we’re able to ignore them because we’re mostly reader-funded by readers like you. It means we don’t need to chase viral stories, but focus on the deeper, more in-depth journalism.

Thank you for your continued support. We can’t wait to keep delivering you stories in Vancouver.

Sincerely,

Geoff Sharpe and the Vancity Lookout team