Whenever I find that I miss a friend’s status update or my favorite artist’s new post because social channel algorithms decide to hide that for me for whatever reason, I am mad and can’t stop questioning why we let algorithms decide what content we should see?

I LOVE algorithm because it filters out the pages I need to follow but don’t really want to see their updates, the “friends” that we sort of connect but don’t care what is going on in their life. He knows my taste. He put the things I like to read/ watch on top of my feed. I get to see my favorite content/page right away every time I login my account. It’s convenient, quick and effortless.

I HATE algorithm because he likes to guess what I like, sometimes he makes terrible mistakes. Alright, I admit that I only remember mistakes, and don’t appreciate the “right decisions” he made. Because he is a formula, a machine, a system, he is not supposed to make mistakes. All the right things are supposed to be RIGHT!

For a while, I got emails from Facebook every time a friend updated her Facebook status. I don’t understand why. She is not a friend that I need to know every move on her Facebook. I stopped that email and still couldn’t figure out why Facebook thought we were that close. What did I do wrong to confuse Facebook’s algorithms?! I question myself. I hope I can figure it out and avoid doing it again to another person.

Same on Instagram. I was upset when they announced that they would roll out similar algorithm like Facebook. Does that mean I can’t be lazy any more? I can’t just sit and enjoy viewing the posts I like without any actions. Instead, to avoid the algorithm misunderstands me, I have to be a busy and qualified social media user – move my finger tip every time to “like” the posts I like, because I don’t want them to be hidden because the algorithm thinks I don’t like them!

I don’t like the feel that I am controlled. I am forced to change my social habit (I mean the habit on social media). I don’t want a machine to guess what I like and shape my habit. I don’t feel right when a machine seems to know me better than myself. I want to take back the control.

Should the social channels give the users an option – opt out the algorithm, everything goes back to the chronological order? If so, will you do that?