it ended up being mostly a personal story rather than a point-by-point rebuttal of arguments that various people make against algorithmic recommendation. maybe that's more effective anyway 🤷

I might write a follow up to this for people who are interested in working on recommendation. e.g. the mental model I have for recommendation, ideas for problem domains to get started with, advice for techniques and tools to use...

this essay kind of leads into a bunch of other thoughts I have about incentive alignment, which kind of foundational for my whole "unbundled web" model. I think I'll do that as a separate piece though.

maybe I should have a routine of switching off every other week between writing essays and writing about stuff I'm working on/other random thoughts. I've got a handful of essays I'd like to write, and the random thoughts + links to stuff I'm reading might be more interesting if I batch them up every two weeks anyway.

more benefits: - more variety for readers - I might actually start collecting notes and ideas for essays ahead of time if I know I'm going to write one on a particular day

I like the questions you formulated at the end too. There’s some big challenges with content and recommendations that get more complicated by the day. I’d love to hear your thoughts on AI in content generation too.