Personalisation as a concept needs to die. It’s sold as a shiny cutting-edge thing and sounds like it should be a good idea, but no one seems to realise that beyond the hype the tech is surprisingly shitty, like Web3 or voice apps. And the ones that do know aren’t going to let on because they’re the ones trying to sell personalisation software.

Personalised ads result in vast amounts of corporate surveillance and still don’t work. I’ve never understood why contextual ads aren’t seen as good enough. If I’m looking at reviews for baby products, for example, then probably going to be interested in ads for similar baby products.

And with personalised content or product recommendations, very few companies have the breadth and depth of content that even begin to make it worthwhile, and even those that do can’t seem to do more than show you more of what you’ve encountered before. YouTube and Instagram’s personalisation algos can be downright annoying ‘You watched that one video randomly? Okay, here’s hundreds more like it, crowding out all the things you do watch regularly.’

Good search and discovery tools are always better than a stupid recommendation engine, and they’re all stupid.