Hidden Influences: How algorithmic recommenders shape our lives

You don’t choose what you see on the internet. Algorithms choose for you. We spend 12 billion hours a day browsing the internet. And in the background, sophisticated recommender systems silently decide what appears on our feeds, what we click next, and what we think we want. These invisible algorithms direct our entertainment, news, shopping, friendships, dates—even our sense of identity.

Algorithmic recommender systems are some of the internet’s most closely guarded secrets. This book pull...