Attention Is All You Have: A Case for the Intentional Web
Original: Attention is all you have
Why This Matters
Algorithmic feed design is now a mainstream attention-health concern, not just a niche critique.
Software developer Alice GG argues that recommendation algorithms on YouTube, Spotify, LinkedIn, and Reddit have effectively outsourced human attention to corporate and adversarial interests. She calls for a return to intentional browsing — RSS feeds, blogs, bookmarks — as a practical counter to algorithmic manipulation.
Drawing on the well-documented 'Tetris effect' — where repeated exposure shapes perception — Alice GG contends that whatever dominates your screen ends up shaping your thinking. The problem, she argues, is that most people no longer choose what dominates that screen. YouTube surfaces stock market anxiety after a cooking video. Spotify injects AI-generated tracks to dodge royalty payments. LinkedIn buries actual career updates beneath opinion posts from strangers promoting Microsoft-adjacent interests. Reddit comment sections, she notes bluntly, may now be largely LLMs and bot accounts.
Her argument isn't purely nostalgic. She points out that the pre-algorithm web — built around bookmarked sites, specific-purpose pages, infrequent blog updates — required deliberate navigation. That friction was a feature. Content didn't try to keep you there. The trade-off was patience: a slower feed, gaps between updates, no infinite scroll.
Her prescription is behavioral, not technological. Stop opening apps expecting to be entertained. Pick destinations with intent. Rebuild the habit of reading RSS feeds and finishing tutorials rather than cycling through short-form video. 'Like every habit, the only thing you have to do is to keep at it,' she writes. The intentional internet, she concludes, hasn't disappeared — it's just been buried under the corporate layer.