It's bad for consumers too, I think. Reddit has recently gone more in this direction and now I have beloved small reddits that don't pop up on my feed, and meanwhile it's trying to get me to watch videos of people making stupid food recipes, half-true mystery factoids, aliens, personal gossip-sharing, etc. I assume they do this because it works but it's seriously degraded the experience.

How to rebel? That's the question. Personally, I'm leaning into making more depthy more thoughtful stuff. Bea Wolf - longform poetry. A City on Mars - a three-year research project. Oddly, traditional publishing feels like part of the rebellion, because even a bottomline-obsessed publisher still gives a damn about what's in the books and what it says about them. They look bad and feel bad about making trash. Social media breaks that relationship.

One more thing that sucks? Because I can't directly tell my followers about new books and things anymore, since almost nobody reads RSS and facebook/twitter/instagram only feed people viral content, I have to be *way more annoying*. Have you noticed how authors don't just make books but have to *become their books* in online branding personae for months at a time? That's because it's the only way to reach you.

Last thought - I'm fairly along in my career and I'll be OK. However, what frightens me is you see talented young artists who don't even recognize the problem. They adjust their energies to these algorithms, reap "likes" for what they're worth, sell disposable products that are only of interest because they're made by an influencer, and they don't even hate it!