My BBC iPlayer Radio app was killed off yesterday, and I had to download BBC Sounds instead. I'm not best pleased.
Here's a comments box solely for discussing BBC Sounds.
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One of the things I don't like about BBC Sounds is its insistence on recommending things. It thinks it knows what I'd like to listen to, and prioritises that, but generally it thinks wrong. I'd prefer the ability to tell the app what I'm interested in, but instead an algorithm insists on deciding for me, and it's less good at knowing my mind than I am.
Several other digital services use recommendations to get us to interact more. YouTube, for example, throws up a whole load of suggestions every time you watch a video, and autoplays the top one unless you tell it not to. I quite enjoy going down the list and clicking on 'Not interested', just to confuse the algorithm, but seemingly it never forgets. Even if I only ever watched a particular genre of video once, because it turned out not to be very interesting, it still keeps popping up and I can't make it go away.
TV streaming services are also particularly keen on recommendations. As soon as one programme finishes, or nearly finishes, they chip in with what they think you should watch next, and hey presto up it comes unless you deliberately act to stop it. Usually it's the next programme in the series, which makes sense, but it is still a broad assumption that you want more of the same, or a desperate attempt to keep your attention, or both.
Spotify would rather serve you playlists than albums, a stream of daily listening selected by an unseen algorithm. My iPlayer homepage has a string of TV recommendations, most of which I know I've already watched, or else know I have no intention of ever doing so. Twitter and Facebook prefer to replace chronological order with content they think you'll like instead, and make it damned hard to switch such tampering off. And Google often precedes its search results with recommendations of its own, for which read paid-for advertising, as those with money seek to skew your agenda.
Train an algorithm well and maybe it does deliver more of what you're actually interested in. Sometimes a recommendation can throw up something you might never have realised you really wanted to experience. If there are jewels out that there millions of other people have loved, might you not enjoy them too? Many of your favourite bands, books, podcasts, programmes, whatever, may first have popped up in someone else's recommendations. But those recommendations probably had a human hand behind them, rather than automated crowd-sourced advice.
I like to be my own curator. I don't go on YouTube with the intention of sitting in front of it for two hours while it plays whatever it wants. I find it quite unnerving that people do, especially when what's served up probably includes paid-for content, and has been known to feature extremist political material. I go to the television to watch my choice of what's available, not to pick one of the three most heavily-promoted options. Although the full range of content is always there underneath, it's increasingly hidden beneath layers of Now Watch This.
Recommendations are nothing new, of course. The Britannia Music Club spent decades sending subscribers an album of the month unless they chipped in and stopped it. Readers Digest did something very similar with books. Newspapers have always been an editor's choice of news and features, not your own. And what are traditional TV and radio anyway, other than a stream of recommended content strung out in linear fashion over which you have no control whatsoever, other than to turn them off.
Our online lives are increasing blighted by recommendations, most of it algorithmic, much of it advertising masquerading as content. It's getting harder to be shown everything and make your own selection, rather than nudged off down a path of somebody else's choosing. How long before we lose control altogether and find our choices being constrained solely by what others recommend? And if you've enjoyed today's post please don't leave me, perhaps you'd enjoy reading oneofthesefascinatingoldstories next instead.
