How clips ate the internet

Once upon a time, you could probably guess why most things appeared on your feed. Maybe you followed the creator who posted it; maybe you’d liked their stuff in the past; maybe all your friends were into them. That’s not how it works anymore, though. The stuff you see on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, and elsewhere has become much harder to trace — the feeds are run by algorithms with lots of conflicting incentives, and are being gamed by an army of internet users you might not…