SHERINGHAM DIARY NO 112 - Living With Algorithms

Whilst wandering around. the admittedly less than salubrious, Swaffham shopping centre. We encountered a little arcade with a range of smaller independent hobbled together shops. One was selling Antique & Collectibles with the fabulous name of - SHABBY TATT.  A more honest piece of self-parody I could not find.

Finally this dratted election is over, and I, like many others, breathed sighs of relief. Six weeks of campaigning with an outcome as forecast. I voted strategically, as I've had to do most of my adult life, this time for the Lib Dems. Our constituency went back to the Lib Dems after being Tory the last term. Hurrah!. 

Our new MP Steff Aquarone

Reform took about 3,000 votes from the Torys, which was roughly the same as the Lib Dem majority. So without that the result would have been very close to 50/50. When you look at the vote spread nationally and how that is not reflected in the number of seats, a more cogent example of how unfair and unrepresentative the first past the post system is, could not be made. 

I appreciate Labour winning restores some sense of sanity, and I'm already impressed with the speed they are getting on with things. There is a nagging unease, that any landslide majority where the winning party cannot be held to account or blocked from doing stupid things is, whatever the political colour, a dangerous precedent. We've just got rid of one ideologically bonkers government with an unassailable majority. The Labour Party who have replaced them via our existing voting system, is unlikely to deal with the growing democratic deficit the first past the post system is inevitably creating. On this, I place no trust in them to do the right thing for the future health of our democracy.

I recently heard a useful term on a recent posting on Elizabeth Oldfield's The Sacred podcast, referring to folk on the Internet who are "conflict entrepreneurs'. Those who deliberately engineer polarised issues and discussions, for no other reason than to increase views to their website / podcast / You Tube etc. Working the algorithms bias towards contested issues for personal fame and financial gain. And I guess I don't need to name names, you know who this type of people are. One keeps popping up on my You Tube home page, even though I've expressed my desire twice, to not see them on my feed ever again. 

But I've got accustomed to making a silly or innocent click on a post I thought might be of interest, which has unforeseen consequences. A deluge of posts 'recommended for you' or 'you might like this'. I've recently been watching video posts of John Vervaeke, who works in the same university faculty as Jordan Peterson. So I now also get Peterson's You Tube site regularly popping up, most recently an interview with Tommy Robinson. So it is sometimes extreme right wing unsavoury stuff. I need to know it exists, but its not my bag at all.

I'm shocked by how much right wing and neo facist stuff is available all over the internet, you cannot really escape bumping into it. Numerous You Tube sites offering you 'the truth they don't want you to see'. Likewise, once the internet knows you are gay, it decides to show you loads of guys taking their tops off. And there are a huge huge number of men of indeterminate sexual orientation who do this. - professionally - for a living. Some of it broaching on sub porn. 

There was a phase last year of 'short' videos popping up, of well oiled and muscled men in very brief briefs, doing a single arm hand stand and bouncing up and down on that hand until the immense size of their tumescence wanging around, was hardly contained by their skimpy boxers. It took months of iron discipline, for the algorithm to calm down.