Search-engine algorithms displaced human judgment in content prioritization

Evidence

As a new media mogul, Jonah Peretti was idiosyncratic. He mostly obsessed over cracking the secrets of virality. As former colleague Ben Smith noted, “He wasn’t concerned with taste or quality or brand or consistency. He just wanted to know what would get traffic.” Peretti used this data-driven approach to revitalize The Huffington Post, creating a sophisticated system of search engine optimization (SEO) that catered to Google’s algorithms. They engineered articles with keyword-rich headlines, strategically named URLs, and hidden HTML elements to ensure high visibility in search results. This formula drastically increased the site’s traffic, solidifying its place as a leading digital media outlet. And here began the practice of prioritizing content to satisfy Google’s “machines” more than to cater to the long-term needs of human readers. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 197

Categorization

• XREF: Core mechanism for flatterned taste: when algorithms select content by traffic, not prestige, they dissolve whatever guarded subcultural hierarchies remained. — connects to: Algorithmic content filtering can funnel users toward polarization and extremism — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 476
• SEED: Possible angle: ‘the death of the tastemaker’ — SEO as the moment taste hierarchies surrendered to machine optimization, and what replaced them.