i feel like shopping and traveling two things that the web was supposed to make easier have suffered a sort of bell curve decline where 1) you search for a product on amazon and are served things that are somehow (hashtags, dark pattern, etc) related to the item 2) you search for restaurants or hotels and have to contend with some results appearing first (paid, sponsored, etc) and try to sort the reviews between blatantly fake, aggro people, and people who seem to review everything but really have no specifity of comments, just reviewing to review.

It’s not that hard to design manipulation resistant algorithms. Relevant’s reputation system is a case in point. We’ve designed it with a specific goal of making it resilient while being transparent. Zeynep Tufeki on Algorithms: “What's the alternative? At a minimum, there should be more transparency as to how and why certain things are recommended for us to watch or buy or read. The counterargument would be that transparency would make them easier to game. My counter-counterargument is that maybe algorithms that are so easy to game shouldn't be used at all.”