Approximately 35 per cent of all purchases made on Amazon are driven by its recommendation engine, approximately 70 per cent of all viewing on YouTube comes from algorithm-driven recommendations, and peer-reviewed evidence has shown that even randomly assigned recommendations measurably alter what consumers are willing to pay for a product

The popular framing of algorithmic recommendation, repeated across most contemporary writing on consumer technology, is that personalised suggestions surface preferences the consumer already has. The algorithm watches what someone does, identifies a pattern, and offers more of what the pattern predicts they will like. On this account, the algorithm is a useful but essentially neutral [...] The post Approximately 35 per cent of all purchases made on Amazon are driven by its recommendation engine,