Taste Collapse, Trust Vacuums, and the Algorithmic Afterlife
Tracking Netflix’s flattening effect on cinema, Musk’s X as a disinfo engine, and the slow dissolve of culture under AI automation.
We’re training the system to know what we like and now it’s building for that. Whether it’s a Netflix slate engineered for ambient consumption, a breaking news feed where narrative wins over truth, or a future where AI remixes culture in our own image, this week’s headlines all point to similar shifts, personalization reshapes what gets made and remaps how meaning moves.
This alert scans the full stack from content recommendation to social trust collapse to the emerging aesthetic of AI-made everything. At each layer, the logic of optimization is trading surprise for sameness, and complexity for click-through. It’s both a design issue and a cultural risk.
Netflix’s Algorithmic Middle
The Guardian – Aug 28 - What Has the Netflix Algorithm Done to Our Films?
When Netflix optimized distribution, it also reset the boundaries of creative expression. As the platform chases scale and completion rates, its most expensive productions have begun to look like algorithmic soup; expensive but forgettable, built to avoid friction, and optimized for passive attention. The Electric State is just the latest example. Even when the data isn’t writing the script, it’s setting the rails, down to pacing, lighting, and thumbnail design.
Why it matters
The algorithm isn’t writing the stories, but it’s shaping the conditions under which stories survive. Netflix may claim its commissioning process is still driven by “70% gut,” but the ecosystem it built is already teaching the next generation of creators to avoid risk, flatten tone, and build for autoplay. The result is less authorship, more template. Less cinema, more feed.
X as an Accelerant for Disinfo Theater
Wired – Sep 3 - How Disinformation About the Minnesota Shooting Spread Like Wildfire on X
After the recent Minnesota church shooting, X became the central vector for instant narrative warfare. Conspiracies from all sides surged within minutes. Claims were amplified before facts could stabilize. Musk himself weighed in, as did elected officials, podcasters, and provocateurs, each resharing selective screenshots, each assigning motive. X’s new structure rewards the loudest post, not the most accurate one, and its disbanded trust teams have left a vacuum filled by chaos.
Why it matters
I’ve written before that platforms will start writing the narrative and this is that dynamic in action. The feed doesn’t only amplify opinion, it flattens sequence, severs verification, and rewards narrative velocity over reality. And sadly, X isn’t broken, it’s working exactly as designed. Engagement-first incentives, gutted moderation, and AI-powered hallucinations now define the real-time media layer. This is a structural collapse of truth discovery, hitting right when we most need coordinated responses to narrative chaos. Every future crisis will pass through this filter.
The Godfather of the Cable Stack Has Regrets
New York Times – Aug 29 - He Paved the Way for CNN, Fox News and the Internet. He’s Not Sure We’re Better Off.
In his new memoir Born to Be Wired, John Malone reflects on a legacy that spans CNN, Fox News, broadband rollout, and the original bundle logic of modern media. From monopoly jokes to merger tips, he remains deeply embedded in the industry he helped shape. But beneath the anecdotes is a quieter recognition that the systems he built helped fragment trust, dilute journalism, and usher in a platform-driven media economy where scale outpaced substance.
Why it matters
Malone’s story is a living case study in how infrastructure choices shape culture. The same pipes that carried news and entertainment now carry disinfo and algorithmic content, with fewer intermediaries and less accountability. His admission isn’t nostalgia as much as it's a warning. We’re living in the compounding aftermath of stack-level decisions made decades ago.
The Algorithmic Drift of Culture Itself
The New Yorker – Sep 1 - A.I. Is Coming for Culture
Joshua Rothman’s essay offers a slow-burn meditation on what AI-generated content means for taste, memory, and meaning (which is to say, I loved it). From auto-podcast hosts to AI remixes of your own writing, the piece explores how tools built for speed and customization are creating a new kind of cultural feedback loop. AI reshapes more than it replicates as its flattening style, feeding our own preferences back to us, and turning creation into prompt-response instead of practice.
Why it matters
This isn’t a fight about art versus AI. It’s about what kind of culture survives when curation is synthetic, collaboration is one-sided, and creativity becomes real-time synthesis. As AI tools accelerate content production, they may also strip away the friction that makes culture feel communal. Stories made for you aren’t the same as stories made with you and once we forget the difference, the algorithm wins.
The Feed Is the Format
Across all four stories, one idea keeps surfacing that the platforms that distribute culture are now remaking it in their own image and style. Netflix flattens cinema to fit a global median. X reshapes news into narrative warfare. AI tools remix the past until the idea of authorship itself starts to fade.
This is a shift in the underlying logic of creation baked into design, policy, and platform incentives. The feed is now the format. And unless we build for friction, the narrative, aesthetic, or social then we risk optimizing ourselves out of originality.