Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture

My second book, Filterworld, will be published by Doubleday in January 2024.

It’s a book about how digital platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Spotify took over our modes of cultural distribution in the past decade. Algorithmic recommendations, like TikTok’s For You feed or Netflix’s homepage, control the majority of what we see and hear online. Though they promise personalization, the net result of so many algorithms is a homogenization of culture.

This book follows years of reporting and writing I’ve been doing. I began noticing the effects of algorithmic recommendations around 2016, when I was writing my essay “Welcome to AirSpace,” about the sameness of Airbnbs. Ever since, I’ve noticed that the digital platforms we spend so much time on are making our tastes more similar than different. There have been complaints of persistent sameness everywhere: in music, art, food, and travel.

The book is a reported critique — an investigation as well as an essay. I had conversations with tech executives, computer scientists, users, influencers, and artists of all kinds to figure out what algorithmic recommendations have done to our cultural ecosystem. A running theme is “algorithmic anxiety”: the paranoia, fear, and confusion we feel when algorithms judge us either incorrectly or far too accurately.

You can pre-order the book right now! Choose your favorite site, or, even better, call your local bookstore and request it.

Amazon / Barnes and Noble / Bookshop / Other options are listed at PRH

Filterworld will be published by Heligo (Bonnier) in the UK and in translation in many other countries. Contact Elena Hershey at Doubleday for press inquiries or galley requests. Non-U.S. publishers or press can also contact Caroline Eisenmann at Frances Goldin Agency.

For updates and previews of the book, sign up for my email newsletter.