#tl;dr I do not believe algorithms inherently equal evil

[daydreamorama]

Okay to all agorithms above but consider this:

When I was young I would go to the library every week, whenever I was in a new city I would go the library. I would find the librarian and say 'These were the last 10 books I read, and oh I read this one too but hated it, what should I read next?' and the librarian would think a moment and then go 'try these' and give me a small list.

The librarian was functioning as a recommendation engine. (I'll use engine to avoid 'algorithm feels')

When I was older the internet became a thing and I told a bookstore seller: here are all the 200 books I've read and what I rated each one. And the bookstore (who yes was making money off me buying the books (though I often went to the library instead, cause $$)) said here try these!

Later sites like goodreads allowed you to import what you read and offered recommendations. It even got so detailed like it realized I read a LOT of urban early 20s female protaganist fantasy with male werewolf love interests (look don't judge me ) and now when it offerred recs it gave me 10 categories. like are you in the mood fore fantasy in general? maybe werewolves? maybe <this very very specific niche category>? and I could see what was in the list, and at one time it was driven solely by what I liked compared to similar people liked and offered up.

These were great for finding new stories outside my own searching! Imagine you are in a large fandom (or you read basically anything of a tag regardless of fandom) and you've read everything you can find that was tagged 'asexual character' it's your favorite tag and you're really good at searching it. Now lets say there's this story, not super popular in kudos, hey it's a niche tag! but right up your ally. And there's 100 people who've read and liked 90% of the same things you do. but have also read this story! so the engine says hey! this story doesn't have the tags you'd maybe normally follow, maybe you normally wouldn't even find it, but we think you'll really like it! Here! So you look at it and you go huh based on the tags yeah I maybe woudln't have given it a try but it seems somewhat interesting, so you read it, and love it. Maybe it's 'right' 50% of the time, but you still win, you still discover things you normally wouldn't. (and maybe you end up discovering a tiny little new fandom and watching all the episodes). Currently you can kiiind of get this by looking at other's bookmarks or rec lists (which is it's own kind of popularity algorithm).

Do I think a03 will implement this? Probably not, it would take a lot of coding, a lot of backlash (see above), and there are many other things that many other people want them to spend their time and money on. I also think a lot of people will be (rightfully if done wrong) concerned about privacy. But also I could probably right this today with publicly available info by just using a script to get all the kudos people of every story have it compare my kudos, and find 'similar users' and suggest me stories. (it would require a shit ton of bot scraping to open every single of the millions of fanworks, but still, if your worried about privacy in terms of who kudos what (as a non-guest), well. kudos are already public)

But is a recommendation engine inherently evil? No.

tl;dr I think it would be great if I could go in a 'for you' tab that would recommend me stories i haven't kudos'ed that users who have kudosed a lot of the same things I did so I don't just doom scroll pages and pages of fic hoping one stands out. If it was solely based on kudos (and maybe bookmarks) of non-guests I also don't think it will violate privacy because that info is already public.

i am so baffled by the conversation i'm watching right now, where younglings who assumed AO3 had an algorithm felt mocked and condescended to when informed no, AO3 does not push any content at any user, and so the younglings are now doubling down and stanning algorithm??? that thing where social media sites get money from advertisers the more shit you click on so they shove content at you that is theoretically to your interest but actually is content that will keep you clicking, including content that enrages you, because they don't care about giving you shit you like just about keeping you engaged as long as possible, and oh also did we mention this ties into the modern lack of data privacy, the algorithm is watching everything you interact with to profile you better for advertising to you, it's spying on you across platforms whenever possible, THAT algorithm,

really you want it to know what fanfic you read, too? good grief