The power of platforms is the control of discovery

Look at this elizabeth tobey, have the patience please, it’s worth it:

What kind of relevance algorithm requires adding the username of the author, if one searches for the exact title words?

Discovery is the weapon platforms have against independent publishers.

And that is why all platforms, Medium, @Facebook, @Twitter, @instagram etc., all migrate towards non organic results, filtered lists that help

platforms show what they want to show.

It is important to note, want to show, not “have to”, “need to” or “is best for the user”, not even what a “machine” decides to show. Machines cannot decide otherwise than what they are programmed to “decide”. There is a lot of manual tweaking to seemingly automated decisions, and I believe a lot of consumers do not know this fact. It is a danger that a lot of small publishers will have their voices unheard simply because some “important” factor disqualifies them from being found.

What if I was searching for some “obscure” specific fact checking say, “level of emissions on Volkswagen”, would it be normal to find think pieces about “global warming” instead of an article titled “Level of emissions on XYZ Volkswagen models” ? I hardly think so.

What if Google decides to switch to the ways of Facebook, medium or twitter and instead of enabling access to information, start to suddenly broker it? What will the Internet be used for then?

This is not good.