Stop calling it 'personalized': Dev critiques recommendation systems as mere behavioral clustering

Successful_Front_299 · reddit · 2026-07-31

The author criticizes the widespread misuse of the term "personalized recommendations." Most systems still rely on collaborative filtering, which essentially models a cluster of users with similar behavioral patterns rather than understanding the individual.

While this works for taste-clustered items like books or movies, two users with identical online behaviors might need completely different products due to factors like culture or net worth. The author argues that developers are getting lazy with AI, applying the same recommendation architecture across categories that have fundamentally different requirements.

Original post →

More from AGI Musings

AGI Musings channel →