Jack Conte is Building an Algorithm That Doesn’t Rot Your Brain

[New York Times]

The World Wide Web was introduced some three decades ago. Describing in 2019 the hopes that had been projected onto the internet at its inception, The New York Times Magazine wrote that many believed it would “empower the masses, overthrow hierarchies” and help “build a virtual world that was far superior to the terrestrial one that bound us.”

But in 2025, the internet now feels like a dystopia: Look past the rage-bait videos, the A.I. reels and the porn, and you’ll find an algorithm whose design forces you to wonder whether your For You page really is, in fact, for you, or for the company behind the algorithm.

In the Opinion Video here, Jack Conte, the chief executive of Patreon, a platform for creators to monetize their art and content, outlines his vision for an internet that puts people, not ad revenues, first.

It’s time, Conte argues, “for algorithms to serve people instead of people serving algorithms.”