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Dear Reader, How does the information that reaches you, reach you? In the old days, you would subscribe to a favourite newspaper or magazine. Of course you would read the pieces critically and thoughtfully, but you trusted the editors of those magazines to make reasonable decisions about what might be worth your time in the first place. Then came the era of human recommender algorithms. When you logged on to Facebook, you could see and read what your friends shared. That brought its own biases, of course, but it let many of us discover lots of new and interesting writing that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Now we live in a time of mass algorithms. On many social networks, your feed will be full (by default) of writing by people you’ve never met and who you know nothing about. The algorithms are blindly selecting for “engagement”, but often in the sense of outrage: a piece that is cynically designed to provoke its audience to anger will get reads and reactions, and therefore be shared to even more people. The world seems to be trapped in a nightmarish cycle of rage-bait. At The Browser, we’re trying to offer an alternative. Caroline and I sit down every weekday and read everything that has been published by every publication we have ever found to create writing of value, across the spectrum and around the globe. Of course we all have our biases, but we hope to offer something closer to the classic magazine experience, or personal recommendations from a friend: every piece in The Browser is there because a real human read it and found it thought-provoking. As you can imagine, this is very expensive and time-consuming to produce. We’re only able to do it thanks to our loyal paid subscribers. As we fight this uphill battle against the all-pervading algorithms, we’d greatly appreciate it if you would support our mission by becoming a paid subscriber. Not only will you be supporting our tiny, totally human team of editors, you’ll receive five articles, a podcast and video recommendation every day, along with special editions on the weekends. With your help, The Browser can continue to exist as a thoughtful space where one can escape the algorithms. Best
Kaamya
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