Why 2016 Was The Year Of The Algorithmic Timeline
by The Daily Eye Team December 26 2016, 5:09 pm Estimated Reading Time: 0 mins, 39 secs2016 was the year of "post fact" news, but it was also the year of post-new news. 2016 was the year of the algorithmic timeline, in which tech companies dismantled the concept of time entirely.
This year saw Facebook, Twitter and Instagram occupy the role of mainstream media publishers, whether or not they chose to admit it. Each platform instituted similar changes: their "timeline" would no longer display the most recent story at the top, but would use algorithms to decide on what individual users most wanted to see. Depending on our friendships and actions, the system might deliver old news, biased news, or news which had already been disproven. In many cases what we saw was speculation and rumor; stories which weren’t really news at all.