Blog Post #3

Since last class I have watched social media carefully to see the kind of news that they algorithmically display on my news feeds. Most of the “news” that I received is tailored around the idea that I live in the greater Dallas area, I am a female that enjoys relationship, spiritual, and self-diagnosis articles or blogs, and, just like anyone else that I know, I am shocked and intrigued by disturbing and gruesome criminal stories. This was very interesting to me because I do not interact on social media very much anymore and they have little to no information about my daily life or connections presently. Besides carefully dissecting my social media news feeds, I also have paid attention to the new updates that have occurred on my Netflix profile. Netflix has revamped their categories for easier searches, also tailoring a section, “Top Picks”, to what their profiling tools think I would be most interested in. In class, we have talked about a Marxist society and how people, just like myself, get categorized based on certain aspects of their life, their searches, and their viewer preferences. After some research into the algorithms that Netflix uses to profile its users I found an article that said, “In a broad sense, most of our algorithms are based on the assumption that similar viewing patterns represent similar user tastes. We can use the behavior of similar users to infer your preferences.” It also stated that, “The company estimates that 75 percent of viewer activity is driven by recommendation.” Because in the past users are consistent in their searches, we, as users, are easily placed in a group that will define what we are shown first and what we will be most apt to watch in the future. In whole I have noticed that Netflix, just like any other media portal we use, has their own way of using their portal to gather information and ultimately control the actions of their users within the realms of said portal.