“Our attention is all we have. And we already gave away a huge percentage of it to machine learning algorithms 10 years ago, and we are living in an intensely different and I think worse world because of it.” Was 2016 a sneaky inflection point?
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Comments 4
This feels so very correct. Where are we talking about what to do about it?
Here's a summary for people who, like me, don't watch videos:
Hank Green argues that 2016, not 2026, was the last "normal" year because a fundamental media shift altered human attention. In 2016, mobile internet surpassed desktop, digital ads overtook television, and platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube adopted algorithmic, machine-learning feeds. Older demographics joined Facebook en masse, where outrage and fake news outperformed mainstream reporting. Because recommendation algorithms prioritize engagement through fear, moral outrage, and division, societal trust collapsed. Consequently, humanity handed its focus over to machine learning a decade ago, unintentionally allowing algorithms to shape media consumption, human behavior, and the modern world.
How was this summary created?
John Green has a rebuttal video out today, arguing the the last normal year was a little further back than 2016: in 1345.
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