In this talk, Dr. Christian Sandvig will argue that automated filtering, curation, and recommendation systems have propelled "the feed" to the status of a new and significant genre of information, perhaps as consequential as other familiar genres such as the novel. He will discuss the spread of the feed genre far beyond social media, highlighting examples of feeds that may not be obvious. Dr. Sandvig will then consider the potential societal consequences of the feed genre, raising "corrupt personalization" as a particular problem.

Christian Sandvig is the H. Marshall McLuhan Collegiate Professor in Information, Communication, and Media at the University of Michigan. He is also the Director and co-founder of ESC: The Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing. He previously received the NSF CAREER award in Human-Centered Computing, has been named a "next-generation leader" in science and technology policy by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a "Researcher Making Sure AI is a Force for Good" in Time Magazine, and a "must-follow feed" in science by Wired. As a private citizen he is the named plaintiff in Sandvig v. Barr, the ACLU challenge to the federal anti-hacking law brought by journalists and computer researchers.