Alice Girard Guittard on algorithm-driven attention capture
Software engineer argues recommendation algorithms have colonized human attention, and advocates returning to intentional browsing.
What to know
- Algorithmic recommendation systems on major platforms (YouTube, Spotify, LinkedIn, Reddit) now control what content reaches users, replacing intentional browsing with engagement-maximizing feeds.
- The pre-algorithm web required active navigation via bookmarks to specific websites; today's passive, algorithm-driven feeds represent a fundamental shift in how attention is captured and monetized.
- Girard Guittard argues users can reclaim attention by returning to blogs, RSS feeds, and intentional media consumption, though this requires unlearning the comfort of algorithmic convenience.
- Hacker News commenters widely concurred, citing nostalgia for dial-up-era intentionality and sharing personal experiments with social media abstinence and single-task focus.
The dispute Whether the shift from bookmarks to algorithmic feeds reflects platform manipulation or inevitable human preference for convenience over maintenance. · positions read across 46 posts and comments
Algorithms colonize attention; return to intentional, slower media is both possible and worthwhile.
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“Peak internet was the brief period of time when it was available but we weren't permanently connected. It was an intentional decision to log on, do what you wanted to do, and then disconnect.”
tripleee · Hacker News ↗
The shift to algorithmic feeds reflects user preference for convenience over maintenance; bookmarks failed not by platform design but by human nature.
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“Bookmarks died because most humans are allergic to having to do bookkeeping and cleanup tasks that are incidental to what they really want to do.”
nostrademons · Hacker News ↗
The pre-algorithm web also had attention-hijacking tactics (clickbait homepages, ads); nostalgia overlooks early internet's own manipulation.
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“While they may not be as addictive as "the algorithm" of today, they were still packed with clickbait images/links to attract your attention and ads to drain your wallet.”
cube00 · Hacker News ↗
Algorithms can be useful for discovery and relaxation; the issue is platform comfort and surveillance, not algorithms themselves.
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“You cannot stay focused all day and theres nothing wrong with "just show me random dumb stuff"... And i actually kinda like the youtube algo to wind down - but i can also just switch to a timeshift archive.”
Krei-se · Hacker News ↗
Alice Girard Guittard Software engineer, Tsukumogami Software co-founder
How it unfolded 5 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlespostscomments
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Commenters invoke historical critique of 'push' versus 'pull' internet
Users referenced earlier predictions about a 'push' internet (platforms controlling what reaches you) versus the original 'pull' model (users deciding what to fetch). One noted the shift from symmetrical web authorship (W3C's Amaya browser) to passive consumption modeled on television.
“W3C's Amaya browser was as much an editor as it was a browser. Production and consumption were supposed to be symmetrical. This was the promise of the web.”
— weinzierl -
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Claim of the moment: "Attention is all you have" https:// alicegg.tech/2026/09/21/attent ion
2 more of the top 3 · 38 posts in this stretch
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No internet use is inherently intentional. Old-style internet made you choose where to go, but that doesn't make the use intentional. We make choices all the time on auto-pilot. Choosing isn't the same as being intentional.It's true that it's harder to stay present on addictively designed feeds. But I find it difficult to stay present even…
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Bookmarks died because most humans are allergic to having to do bookkeeping and cleanup tasks that are incidental to what they really want to do.We see that over and over again, in a bunch of non-tech fields. My kids never want to clean up their toys; they will pull out new ones, but it is a struggle to get them into the habit of putting the old…
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Commenters describe personal experiments with attention management
Multiple users shared their own attempts to reclaim intentional consumption: one reported cutting social media and returning to physical books (4 books read this year), another described self-hosting to stay on par with platforms, and a third noted success switching to single-task focus.
“I cut out Social Media earlier this year, and it's been one of the best decisions I've made... I've started getting into the habit of keeping a book on me wherever I go. I've read 4 books this year!”
— rvshchwl -
The Mosaic browser (1993) had full text history search.We then got a bookmark system that was every bit as terrible as a web directory.It stayed that way. The delicious search revenue made organizing websites uninteresting. That obscure website you enjoyed a decade ago but don't even remember, they had lots of traffic like you. No point updating…
1 more of the top 2 · 3 posts in this stretch
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Peak internet was the brief period of time when it was available but we weren't permanently connected. It was an intentional decision to log on, do what you wanted to do, and then disconnect.
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Comment thread reflects nostalgia for pre-algorithm internet
Hacker News commenters began discussing the shift from intentional bookmarking to algorithmic feeds, with multiple users sharing reflections on how the web changed. Discussion centered on why bookmarks became unpopular, the role of browser defaults, and the contrast with early search engines.
“Peak internet was the brief period of time when it was available but we weren't permanently connected. It was an intentional decision to log on, do what you wanted to do, and then disconnect.”
— tripleee -
> You didn’t really have one big app that you could open and order it to entertain you. Instead, you had a few dozen of bookmarks to websites, each with a specific idea in mind.This overlooks how common custom homepages such as Lycos, Yahoo! and MSN were and how the browsers pushed these as their default home pages.While they may not be as…
2 more of the top 3 · 4 posts in this stretch
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I cut out Social Media earlier this year, and it's been one of the best decisions I've made. Part of why I started was remembering that we didn't have doom-scrolling apps before smartphones. The change has been tremendous since I've been trying to go back to more "intentional" media. When I find myself distracted and wanting to pick up my phone, I…
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> Instead of picking what we want to see we let other people decide what is supposed to be good for us.100% agree, and this is exactly why I disable any sort of algorithmic recommendations on the platforms I’m active on. I do this either through the app itself or by using those platforms on the web and hiding distracting elements with an extension…
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Essay shared to Mastodon
The essay was shared to the Mastodon social network, extending reach beyond Hacker News to the federated social media community.
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Attention is all you have L: https:// alicegg.tech/2026/09/21/attent ion C: https:// news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4 9787726 posted on 2026.09.21 at 10:26:56 (c=0, p=4)
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Essay reaches Hacker News front page with 310 points
The post gained significant traction on Hacker News, accumulating 310 points and 87 comments by late afternoon, indicating broad resonance with the tech audience.
“When you let someone else dictate what appears on your screen, it's the same as giving them the key to your brain.”
— Alice Girard Guittard, Software engineer, essay author · source -
background
Alice Girard Guittard publishes 'Attention is all you have' — The Tsukumogami Software co-founder posted an essay on her blog criticizing algorithmic recommendation systems for hijacking user attention. The piece contrasts the pre-algorithm web—where users navigated via intentional bookmarks—with today's platform-driven feeds designed to maximize dwell time and ad clicks.
Also covered reported alongside — the timeline has no entry for these yet
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2 outlets Attention is all you have
first by HN Best, 2d ago · also HN Frontpage
What people are saying 16 voices from 1 site · best of 46 · verbatim
- Yesterday
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Plug for the app I built that's helping me significantly: NoMo ScreentimeIt blocks all distracting apps. To unblock, I need to choose # of minutes upfront, then pause and put my phone face down for sometime. And then, it unblocks the app for the time I requested, and blocks it again.
- Sep 22
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I tend to agree with the post, but narrowly on the hook:> Do you want to listen to music? Just open a Spotify playlist and let the algorithm figure out what you like. Please ignore the AI slop they will insert in between real songs to avoid paying royalties to real artists.To be honest, my Spotify recommendation algorithm complaint is about the…
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Yea, indeed I think we have to proactively keep getting away from doomscrolling/other things which hijack our attention and I don't think it's easy for anyone. It's also not bad if you do it in small doses.> Doomscrolling will make you stay longer and click on a few more ads. I've personally never bought something out of a Google ad. Tbh how much…
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To me, LLMs were the best thing that ever happened when it comes to attention. They allow me to stay focused on what I was sitting for on the computer in the first place, because all that discovery with ads in between or annoying JS activated banners are all gone now.Why would I bother to read advertisements anymore?I also built ZIMdex and gave my…
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I use my bookmark tab. I am not particularly interested in storing a copy of almost any of the links I have in my bookmark tab (why would I want a copy of some Grafana instance?)I do get that for some people it's about research and collecting documents. For me it's basically "quick access to the most recent version of the thing at this URL"
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"The Mosaic browser (1993) had full text history search."The earlier CERN, later W3C, LineMode browser, named "www", also kept a full text history by defaultEach website gets a separate folder, e.g., "308" in the example belowAn .index file contains a log of all requested URLs with timestamps /tmp/w3c-cache/.index Pages are cached in temp files…
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Back in 2012 I switched almost entirely from bookmarking to web clipping into Evernote, which has been great. Evernote itself has gone downhill, and at some point soon I'll probably migrate my collection to Obsidian (which has its own web clipper), but I'm still a big advocate of the general practice. It is indeed great to have a searchable record…
- Sep 21
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Related and not related. Fans of https://andymatuschak.org/ might want to know that he is now working at https://x.com/pico, which apparently has the same tagline as this article "Attention is all you have". But really truly don't click that link that site is a hellhole.(Edit: Wording)
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I heard the term "Gruen Transfer"[1] to describe the successful hijacking of attention in a store. I think it's useful to describe digital platforms, too - you go to YouTube to watch a video recommended by a friend, and then when you're done, The Feed attempts to pull a Gruen on you.[1]
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I just discovered https://hister.org/ (I think from a link here on hacker news) ... it solves the full text history search really really well. - Local go server to index everything into sqlite or postgres - browser extension to send the DOM for indexing. - This happens after each page is finished rendering, so client side rendering doesn't break…
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> Do you want to listen to music? Just open a Spotify playlist and let the algorithm figure out what you like. Please ignore the AI slop they will insert in between real songs to avoid paying royalties to real artists.To be honest it is worse than this. Spotify over the years just seems to have gotten worse and worse at the one job I want it to do…
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The great internet dishes your a personalized world, that is just designed to your order. This is not something specific to internet.The physical world around you is also sculpted by your actions. You "feel at home" while at home only because you have adjusted it to become your mould. You become an integral piece in your world, making you a piece…
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I am pretty sure early versions of the Safari browser (in the 2000s) did in fact store a full-text version of every webpage in the history and allow you to search that. I even remember looking at the plist files where Safari stored all the extracted text.I relied on that a lot until one day a random system update deleted all my old browsing…
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W3C's Amaya browser [1] was as much an editor as it was a browser. Production and consumption were supposed to be symmetrical. This was the promise of the web.Instead we turned it into a worse version of television, where you still only consume passively what is fed to you while being watched and analysed.[1]
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> But like every habit, the only thing you have to do is to keep at it. And if you pay enough attention to it, something will click in your brain.a bad habit i noticed after taking hiatus of focused work was me jumping into different windows and tabs and just mindlessly consuming content without finishing them. after noticing this pattern, i…
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My antidote to this was 100% selfhosting from home as you are now on par with the platforms and have a choice to serve yourself.You cannot stay focused all day and theres nothing wrong with "just show me random dumb stuff" i mean i wont lie, im old and RTL2 was a thing you know even in educated circles. These no tv people read bad fiction…