Predictive algorithms don’t really predict anything; they just make certain kinds of pasts repeatedly reappear.

Outside the platform environment, social interaction is often generative; ideas are shared or generated collaboratively, people influence each other in unpredictable ways. But within platforms, we are catalogued as data and compared with other people’s profiles in the system, a process known as collaborative filtering. Titles are recommended based on both a user’s taste profile and the profiles of others who consume similar content. Users then provide feedback in the form of clicks, and filtering algorithms adjust their recommendations accordingly. This may have the effect of broadening one’s exposure to different content, but on the platform’s terms and along the lines of its computational predictions. The platform flashes a mirror before you, which reflects back not just yourself but how you have been merged with many other people.