There was a talk I went to a few years back where the speaker (Genevieve Bell) discussed the idea of "systems of delight" - that most recommendation engines fai

There was a talk I went to a few years back where the speaker (Genevieve Bell) discussed the idea of "systems of delight" - that most recommendation engines fail because they just tell you things that you know, or that someone wants to sell. What they're bad at is working out what you don't know what you want: the example that she gave was: you land in a new city, you're on your way somewhere. A recommendation engine might already know that you drink coffee and point out the cafes on the way to where you're going - but will it "know" to suggest that there's a public sculpture and that you wouldn't think to look at ordinarily, but you would be happy to see. TikTok seems much closer to that notion of "systems of delight". (However, for a great deal of social media I want to be running what I look at anyway.)