How Algorithms Can Affect Our Lives

Shopping

If you ask Google what to buy, it wants to show you the products from companies which have paid it the most, or products that it owns, such as Google's Office suite.

Friends & Activities

Someone posts up an event - skating, clubbing, or gardening - whatever it is, the algorithm correctly detects that this kind of posts discourages people from staying on the site (because they leave the house and do stuff), so it places this at the bottom of your feed. You now have 20 minutes of content to get through before you see this message.

A Local Election Approaches

You don't know any of the candidates. More well known figures have been covered by supported media, and bad media. The algorithm decides which one you select.

This last once does not have any pernicious precedence that I know of, but I do know that the fact that Google decides what we know about our own politicians will one day cause problems.