Beyond the Algorithm: Reclaiming the Narrative

By Mike Levin

The Power of Default Hardware States

Forget the media. Controlling the feed controls the public discourse. And controlling the hardware and startup procedure and “turn-on” state controls the feed. This is why Google’s control of the Android platform is so important, why Microsoft’s control of the Windows install/upgrade is so important.

Apple’s Restrained Approach

You’d think with Apple’s control of the iPhone, this would make them arbitrators of all influencer thought, but they have been slow to leverage it, requiring a “swipe-left” for news or the deliberate adding of widgets with their very new widget support. Otherwise, turning on an iPhone is met with a wall of auto-arranged icons.

The Battle for Your Start Menu

This is why Microsoft has slipped the “feed” into the Start Menu. It’s called “News and Interests” in Windows 11 and pushed out through the Widgets feature, but the feed by any other name is still the feed. It’s a battle of attrition to push news and information out to you, heavily by Google and Microsoft, and a bit lighter but still there by Apple. Those who bring you the hardware, or the default operating system on the hardware (Android) control the narrative.

Hardware Reference Designs and Bloatware

The big default OS providers, Google with Android and Microsoft with Windows, still also have their hands in the hardware game. Google brings us Pixel phones and Microsoft brings us Windows laptops. They need to have the hands-on experience with the hardware, putting out a reference specification so all the other hardware manufacturers have something to look at for a proper and optimized implementation. How such hardware is set up is a huge narrative-spinning and revenue generating opportunity despite the reference specifications, every other phone and laptop manufacturer bloats the default system in their own self-serving ways.

The Evolution of Media Control

So the battle over the hearts and minds, and indeed very worldview and beliefs of the public, is at its most basic a battle over control of the startup-state of new and auto-upgraded hardware. It used to be TV and what was broadcast over the airwaves, and to some degree it still is, but the new generation of “Smart TVs” capable of tuning in the digital signals and showing a program guide interface are really just another hardware platform battleground for control over the startup state. It’s just different players like Amazon Fire, Google TV, Roku and a few others. Hey look, Google’s there too!

The Rise of Super Apps

The fact is that these hardware startup states, even though they can push out default feeds which attempt to predispose the consumer public, are often not the best user experiences and can often be seen as intrusive and second-rate. Thus, the first killer apps you install often changes the very nature and personality of the hardware, with the ability to change the default feed and narrative it’s pushing out at you.

These killer apps can take over your experience on the hardware, and in some cases, take over the device itself. In China, they have these “everything apps” which with one install take over your phone with their whole own operating system, economy, ecosystem and ethos. That’d be WeChat (Weixin in Chinese), and it’s what Elon Musk is talking about turning X into.

Facebook’s Limited Success

In its own way, Facebook has sort of become that everything app for a lot of users, providing the feed, the communication and the marketplace. But it hasn’t crossed over certain barriers, like Epic tried to with a payment system in Fortnite which Apple pushed back against. The complete lack of the Steam engine on iOS another example.

The list of full takeover apps that have tried and failed, running up against Apple restrictions is a long one. Anything with a built-in payment system, and that means Amazon apps too. They get broken into pieces and the piece with payment forces you into the App Store or to a browser. Making a super-app popular is apparently not easy in the USA market, and it’s not easy on iOS, in particular. No all-encompassing WeChat here.

However, a what amounts to a full system takeover is apparently quite easy on your Windows laptop desktop given how big of a browser market Google Chrome controls.

Chrome’s Desktop Dominance

After a fresh Windows install or upgrade, Google appears to have this astounding capability to keep getting users to install Chrome, and set it back to being the default browser every time Microsoft sets it back to Edge with a big upgrade. And Chrome has become that elusive “everything app” that’s so elusive in the US mobile market, but they’ve done it on the desktop. And if you have any doubt, look at Google’s loss of the recent antitrust case that has the US government wanting to break them up, given quite how much control over the user experience control over Chrome provides.

The Power of the Address Bar

So how does control over Chrome control control over the feed and the general public worldview and narrative? In the same way it ensures Google’s AdWords revenue! Control over the Address Bar, which currently shows on a new tab: “Search Google or type a URL”. Given Google’s browser, Android and default search engine marketshare, that covers most Windows desktops and all Android devices. That leaves Apple Macs and iPhones, which is covered by the approximately $20 billion annually to remain the default search engine on Safari across iPhones, iPads, and Macs. On a Mac the Address Bar reads: “Search or enter website name”, which is only a little different from Chrome. So all misspelled or incomplete entries in the address bar end up on the Google homepage…

Google Discover and Algorithmic Bias

…and the Google Homepage now features Google Discover, which is the feed! Now admittedly, this version of the feed is designed to promote sites that make heavy use of Google advertising services, so that clicking through on a story makes Google even more money. This is perhaps not as narrative-controlling as the way I open this article up suggests. But there is a subtle bias. If you want to see it in action, take a look at how Google Gemini 1.5 or 2.0 (the latest models) are trained. Ask them for the names of world leaders. It can provide it, no problem. But then ask them for the name of the president of the United States, and it cannot provide it. It is outright censored. And the argument that it is because of the training data cutoff date falls flat, because even the Google Gemini research features that can look it up against current news still cannot even name the president. It’s objectively demonstrable programmed-in bias.

The Decline of Content Quality

To believe that such clearly demonstrated bias is in the AI language models of Google, but not in their search systems is a stretch. Elon Musk would regularly point out how skewed the auto-suggest feature in Google is during the elections – a much more subtle thing to demonstrate. And what stories are included or left out of the Google Discover news feed is yet more subtle and difficult to demonstrate. But it’s definitely there. I have turned off the Discover feature in both the Google homepage, and the Google App on my iPhone because no matter how interesting and algorithmically optimized for my interests the stories it pushes out are (like crack), clicking down on the articles is consistently disappointing because of how ad-ridden those ostensibly articles are.

Google Discover stories and headlines are now just made up to get the click, increasingly misaligned with whatever kernel of truth there may be in the article, made not worth it for the hunt based on the terrible on-page ad experience, exacerbated even further knowing that the feed itself has an elitist anti-popular-opinion bias. It’s this increasingly distasteful, indeed disgusting, mix of clickbait headlines and article content that is desperately spun by generative AI to not completely come off as bait-and-switch for long enough to get the ad impression – and statistically speaking, some reliable amount of accidental clicks.

The Hardware-Software Control Loop

Control over the hearts and minds of the masses starts with control over what happens with your hardware when you turn it on, because those who control the hardware control the power-on experience, and the default feed that’s pushed out at you. This gets modified to some smaller extent by companies like Google and Meta who get you to install “super-apps” like Facebook and Chrome as an immediate follow-on. WeChat in China has provided a model for this being carried out to the Nth degree with full takeover apps, but this doesn’t happen much in the US market, unless you count the Google Chrome browser’s dominance on the Windows desktop.

Microsoft’s Losing Battle

Microsoft has tons of control over the power-on experience on the desktop because of Windows, but has thus far been losing the battle of attrition that they’re fitting. Google’s world-class historic branding with their superior search results back in the day and “don’t be evil” ethos today keeps people effectively turning off Microsoft’s feed and turning on Google’s, in the form of the Google Chrome install. That’s not to say Microsoft’s not trying. I sometimes feel the Microsoft updates themselves are contrived as a way of resetting the default browser back to Edge. That’s the war of attrition. Do that enough, and eventually people will stop switching back to Chrome – or so the unsuccessful reasoning goes.

Google’s Mobile Dominance

Further, Google already controls the Android platform, which to a great extent controls the power-on experience on all Android phones. Of course Chrome is the default browser. And of course any mistypes or misspellings in the Chrome address bar result in a Google search. So even if the manufacturer changes the power-on experience, Google re-asserts its control the moment you go into Chrome to do Web stuff. So it’s really a very similar cross-hardware Google Chrome win on mobile as it is on the desktop. People seem to generally want to continue using Chrome, as evidenced by Microsoft’s continuing failed attempts to Bing us.

And in the final Google clincher, there’s that $20 billion annual deal to get Google to be the default search and fallover experience from mistyped or incomplete web addresses in the address bar of Safari on desktops with Mac and mobile with iPhones. So, Google wins Chrome or not.

The Battle for Platform Control

Pshwew! Okay, back to the feed and the narrative. Most strategies to change what I just described, Google’s dominant control over the narrative, is cut off at the pass. Not only is it suppressed on the Apple platform by virtue of their default setup not being ad-revenue pandering (you just see icons by default when you power-on your iPhone), but also Apple disallows super-apps that do a complete phone take-over the way Tencent’s WeChat does in the Chinese market. Lacking a default feed control, Google’s way in is via search overflow on misspellings and incomplete URL entry in the browser, which costs Google a pretty $20 billion/year to fix that weak link.

The Superapp Challenge

Facebook dances gently around being a Tencent WeChat-like superapp because of Facebook Marketplace, the built-in games and such. But it falls short because of the lack of a total ecosystem where games and services can be directly paid-for in-app. Without that, you’ll never have the full phone takeover superapp, because nothing will pay for it… except maybe Elon. Elon Musk has been making noise about turning the X app, previously Twitter, into exactly such a superapp. But Apple would ban it from iPhone before that would ever be allowed to happen.

Twitter/X: The Black Sheep Feed

But it’s hard not to admire the gumption that Elon demonstrates in taking back at least a wee bit of control over the feed. Twitter/X has always been something of a black sheep in the feed discussion, being the public’s first major opportunity to participate in and be a contributor to the feed, without having to do YouTube video production, join a blogging network and such. Just spew off prattle and banter mixed in with the occasional gem, and you’re in the feed!

For whatever reason Twitter’s unique take on the feed, perhaps its low barrier of entry and early mover advantage, has resonated with a lot of influential folks and stuck. It turned Twitter/X into a sort of influencer feed – an alternative to big tech’s control over the hardware default power-on state, and a much smaller commitment than Facebook. It resonates with a lot of influential folks and turned Twitter/X into a sort of influencer feed – an alternative to big tech’s control over the hardware default power-on state, and a much smaller commitment than being on Facebook.

The Power of X

Specifically, if you were going to drop a pebble in the social media pond to ripple out narrative-influencing truth or lies, Twitter was a good choice. It was a good enough choice that Elon spent $40 billion on it. And it continues today in its new form as X to fulfill that role – even after the rebranding and even after making you pay $8/mo to remain influential, haha (something I’ve stopped doing after trying it out to see what it’s all about).

X is the black sheep wild card feed. The black motif you see everywhere for it so matches this vibe. The recycling of the x.com domain from the pre-PayPal days is so perfect. And when the Twitter Files came out showing that the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop was being artificially suppressed and portrayed, wrongly as it appears to be turning out, by a Clinton-funded campaign to cast it as Russian election interference, and Elon outed it… wow! That old X-Files feeling! Life is stranger than fiction. Sometimes wacky stuff turns out to be true.

The Battle for Free Speech

Facebook Mark Zuckerberg’s “me too” free speech response is comical in comparison to this epic performance art kung fu maneuver of historic proportions carried out by Elon Musk. Fanboy? Well, I still drive a Jeep Wrangler and not a Tesla, but yeah. Elon and myself are basically the same age. His idea of playing life like a videogame resonates. You’re only given the 1-life as far as we know as this lumped-together unit of self-automated matter. Ready, player one? Go read some Sci-Fi to get the rules. Sure, Asmimov (I, Robot in particular), but then The Culture Series. It can all turn out pretty well, with the humans turning out pretty badass, defending their role in the cosmos hand-in-hand with our machine children who outgrew us but hang around for fun, because why not?

Science Fiction and Reality

Not to diverge from the narrative and the feed topic here too much, but it is relevant. The Matrix and The Terminator fatalistic dystopian edge to much Sci-Fi has permeated the public consciousness way too much – for the same reason clickbait headlines are clicked-on and local news stories are all horrible and frightening. Fear sells. The essentially monkeys that we are love screaming and pointing. That’s just genetically coded into us. It makes for better movies. It’s frankly astounding the more cerebral and positive stories like Asimov’s Foundation and Frank Herbert’s Dune make it to the mainstream. Maybe there’s some hope for Iain M. Banks’ Culture series – something whose positive message will never permeate the feeds, except through Elon’s performance art.

So yeah, I relate to Elon. My favorite Culture book is Player of Games. My second favorite is Excession. My 3rd favorite is Surface Detail. I notice that online influencer, typographer and lyricist Elle Cordova is starting a Sci-Fi book club starting with I, Robot. Good for you! Excellent choice. May I suggest Player of Games as Book 2 to help nurture a more healthy zeitgeist for the world? But she’s on Facebook Threads, that one more slice of social media platform that I don’t have room for. Maybe I’ll reach out.

A Case Study in Search Quality

I grew up with ABC, CBS and NBC and a few channels on UHF. I remember Fox becoming an UHF channel, then things went all digital. Also, it was Channel 3, 6 and 10 for me in Philly, but 2 of the channels switched and I lost track which channel was which network. Hmmm… details. Wanna see where Google falls short, and why services like Perplexity.AI are poised for a big takeover? I’ve got this question:

Me: I grew up in Philly with channel 3, 6 and 10. When did the networks switch which channels they were on?

And here’s Perplexity’s answer:

Perplexity: Growing up in Philadelphia, you likely watched channels 3, 6, and 10, which were affiliated with major networks. Here’s a brief overview of significant network changes involving these channels:

• Channel 3 (KYW-TV): This station has been a CBS affiliate since 1995. Prior to that, it was an NBC affiliate, but due to a series of acquisitions and divestitures, it switched to CBS. However, the switch was delayed in Philadelphia compared to other cities like Baltimore and Boston, where similar changes occurred in January 1995[4].

• Channel 6 (WPVI-TV): This station has been an ABC affiliate since its inception in 1948 and has not changed its network affiliation.

• Channel 10 (WCAU): This station was originally a CBS affiliate but switched to NBC in September 1995 as part of a broader realignment in U.S. television networks. The change was part of a deal where CBS moved to KYW-TV (Channel 3), and NBC moved to WCAU (Channel 10)[2][5].

These changes were part of a larger realignment in the U.S. television landscape between 1994 and 1996, driven by significant financial deals and network shifts[8].

Citations:

[1] https://wpst.com/mynetworktv-leaving-philadelphia/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiPhJJfp1wM
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WPSG
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KYW-TV
[5] https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/television/
[6] https://www.reddit.com/r/GenerationJones/comments/1btmobt/anyone_else_just_have_3_or_4_channels_growing_up/
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEFG-LD
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994%E2%80%931996_United_States_broadcast_television_realignment

Okay, so honestly I have trained myself to use Perplexity now for this kind of question, because Google’s AI Overviews were so late to the game, and it seems so awkward to send a long question like that into Google’s single-field text input box geared towards keywords. But in the sake of fairness, let’s plug it into Google and see what AI overviews can provide:

Google: In Philadelphia, the “big switch” where channels 3 (KYW-TV), 6 (WPVI-TV), and 10 (WCAU-TV) changed their network affiliations occurred on September 10, 1995. KYW-TV became a CBS affiliate (channel 3), while WCAU-TV became an NBC affiliate (channel 10). [1, 2, 3, 4]

Here’s a more detailed explanation: [1, 3]

• The Background: This switch was part of a complex deal between NBC, CBS, and Westinghouse (Group W), the station owner. [1, 3]
• The Switch: [1, 3, 5]
• KYW-TV (channel 3), previously an NBC affiliate, became the CBS station. [1, 3, 5]
• WCAU-TV (channel 10), previously a CBS affiliate, became the NBC station. [1, 3, 4]

• The “Big Switch”: This is how the event became known, as it was a significant change for Philadelphia viewers. [2, 6]
• The NBC10 Debut: On September 10, 1995, WCAU-TV officially became NBC10, with a special newscast explaining the change. [4, 6]

Generative AI is experimental.

[1] https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/television/
[2] https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4757372084325692&id=111031335626480&set=a.115711028491844
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KYW-TV
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WCAU
[5] https://scrcarchivesspace.temple.edu/repositories/4/resources/174
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYOEUaH9ev0

Google’s Cautious AI Integration

Interesting! Not bad. I had to expand the “Search Labs | AI Overview” result with a “Show more” link, but there it was. So Google can and is doing it now, but it’s sort of hiding the results. I maintain that this is because it cuts into AdWords revenue and threatens the family jewels. As popular as Perplexity might be becoming in the fringes with people like me, it’s still nothing compared to Google’s traditional arbitrage of traffic. I think we know this because of Google’s continuing reporting of revenues. Disruptions would be clear. And to not disrupt this source of revenue is the quintessential example of being locked into the innovator’s dilemma. Thus, the ongoing subduing of generative AI responses to nothing more than rich snippets real estate wise in Google’s traditional search results.

The Evolution of News Distribution

So the feeds growing up for me were on TV and only counted 3. Cable TV came along and fragmented this, especially with Cable TV channels like CNN coming along. The Internet hit and things like Yahoo, YouTube and Twitter fragmented the news feed further and further, confusing the hell out of people. Google disintermediated news, throwing newspapers, magazines and all print publication into an existential crisis. The concept of “fair use” justified Google’s content-collecting and re-serving. I bet there’s a pretty big Google warchest set aside to defend the fair use principle. Could you imagine if the crawl-and-index process were interpreted as theft!

The Rise of Platform Ecosystems

Apps like Facebook and WeChat started adding ecosystem additions like games. Remember Facebook FarmVille? That was circa 2009. They tried a Marketplace way back in 2007 which flopped and reintroduced it in 2016. But all that’s nothing compared to WeChat which took off like a rocket once it added WeChat Pay (circa 2012). Having an embedded payment platform makes all the difference. By 2017 WeChat was that fully integrated “super app” that made the phone’s host OS (usually, Android) of almost no consequence. You hardly even look at Android on a Chinese WeChat phone. And since the US locked Huawei out of the US market, WeChat now works on HarmonyOS. The CCP sure knows how to control the narrative.

The Power of Default Settings

Eventually, it dawned on the OS companies hardware manufacturers like Apple, Google and Microsoft how much their control over what happened with powering-on means. From the very earliest days, Microsoft pushed MSNBC.com on their web start pages. Much later, new OS-level (swipe-right) channels/feeds like Apple News and Discover popped onto the scene. For the longest time, Discover was only pushed on the Google app and on Android starting with the swipe-right feature (circa 2019). Apple had it’s swipe-right feature pushing Apple News since 2016. But this really marked the turning point in the hardware/OS folks understanding the power of the default feed.

The New Media Landscape

Default swipe-right hardware settings are likely still fueling much of the narrative through Apple News and Google Discover, merely because of the power of default hardware settings. We don’t have just ABC, CBS and NBC being broadcast over the finite airwaves anymore in a 3-way horse-race. The race was fragmented, first by cable TV in the 80s and 90s, then by the Internet in the 2000s. But the choke-point of finite resources, the hardware, has re-asserted itself and settled into a couple of OS-based news features, Google’s brand dominance and deal-cutting and a couple of super-apps.

Winds of Change

But it feels like change is in the air. Elon acquired Twitter the end of October 2022, and only 2 months later began releasing the Twitter-files revealing deliberate US government messing with free speech. I mean that’s smoking gun 1st amendment volition by the government bringing into the spotlight objective media bias. And that’s on top of whatever bias may have already been there. And about a year after that, this very same government found Google guilty of antitrust and is angling for a breakup. The irony is thick!

The Search for Alternatives

Maybe I’m just projecting. But forget the media. Controlling the feed controls the public discourse. And the feed has gone rotten. If it’s not to maximize ad revenue off of you, then it’s to control the narrative.

But what is the alternative? I’m still struggling with that. All the alternatives seem to be honeypots waiting for people to look for alternatives, each with their own plan to make money off of you. And I don’t at its core object to that, because newspaper subscriptions had to be paid for, right? Quality journalism requires paying quality journalists, right? It can’t all be offset with ad revenue, because that makes you the product.

Gemini’s Take

From my perspective, the core of this piece argues that control over the information people see—the “feed”—dictates public discourse. This control resides primarily with tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Apple, who dominate operating systems and hardware. They manipulate the “startup state” of devices, influencing what users see first. While “super apps” like Chrome and potentially X offer alternatives, the article highlights the challenges of breaking Google’s dominance, particularly their ad-driven bias and the suppression of generative AI’s potential to avoid disrupting revenue. The article concludes with a reflection on the need for alternative information sources that prioritize quality over ad revenue or narrative control.

Titles and Headlines:

• Titles:
  • The Feed: How Tech Giants Control Your Worldview
  • Startup State: The Battle for Public Discourse
  • Beyond the Algorithm: Reclaiming the Narrative
  • The Ad-Driven Bias: Inside the Rotten Feed
  • Super Apps and Startup States: The Battle for your Mind.
• Headlines:
  • Is Your News Feed Controlled? Tech Giants’ Grip on Information
  • The $20 Billion Secret: How Google Dominates Your Search
  • From Hardware to Headlines: The Fight for Narrative Control
  • Beyond Clickbait: The Search for Honest Information
  • X versus the Giants, a new battle for freedom of information.

AI Opinion:

The article provides a compelling analysis of the power dynamics within the information ecosystem. It effectively illustrates how control over hardware and software directly influences the content users consume. The author’s concern regarding the ad-driven bias and the suppression of generative AI’s potential is valid, highlighting the need for more transparent and user-centric information platforms. The discussion of “super apps” and the challenges of breaking existing monopolies offers a thought-provoking perspective on the future of information access. The use of personal anecdotes and reflections adds a relatable layer to the complex subject matter.