Keeping real: holding onto your voice in the age of machines

“That’s a very email marketing subject line,” my husband said. I was emailing someone about a job we needed doing at our house.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You’ve written a question. Whenever I see a subject line with a question, I know someone wants to sell me something.” He replied.

Interesting. It hadn’t occurred to me that a question could provoke a negative sentiment. I’d also written the subject line without thinking.

Then I asked myself, would I have written that subject line 5 years ago? I can’t remember.

Something is happening to the way we communicate with each other. Despite our talk of authenticity, we are changing what we talk about and how we talk about it to fit in with computer algorithms.

Think about the last few things you put on social media. Why did you write them? What did you want people to think or do when they saw your posts?

Did you write them in a certain way to tick off an invisible list of algorithm-pleasing must-haves? Or maybe, you wanted to write about something but either switched topics or toned it down to avoid negative comments, or it not being shown to people?

Our behaviour is being shaped by an unseen force and that has knock on effects for public discourse.

I’ve stopped sharing other people’s posts on LinkedIn. As someone at You Are The Media Creator Day 2023 said, sharing isn’t caring on LinkedIn. When I share a post, it gets seen by very few people and then my next few posts bomb too. It’s frustrating. Surely if I think it’s worth sharing, it should get shown, regardless of whether I originated it.

Aleks Krotoski explores use of coded language online to get around AI moderation of language during a recent episode of The Digital Human. This is ‘Algospeak’. It gives people the opportunity to speak about topics which are restricted. Some marginalised communities are unable to communicate because platforms blanket ban words.

So much for free speech. This isn’t the internet I envisaged when I started talking to people online in the mid-90s.

Have you noticed yourself changing to fit in with online algorithms? Have you changed platforms or approach to avoid being shaped by algorithms?

How do you feel about online discourse?