Episode 1 — The Algorithmic Society: What Meta Really Built

This opening episode explores one of the defining questions of our time: how social platforms quietly shifted from tools of connection to engines of cultural engineering. Through an AI-generated prototype of Mark Zuckerberg — built solely on public data, interviews, and speeches — we examine how engagement algorithms evolved into invisible architects shaping identity, behaviour, and collective emotion.

This is not a recreation of a real interview. It is an analytical experiment — a way to interrogate the systems that shaped a generation by staging the conversation we were never able to have.

Drawing from my work at the intersection of AI, communication, and digital culture, the episode investigates how Meta’s design choices influenced everything from emotional grammar to the economics of attention. We discuss the transition from connection to curation, the rise of optimisation as a cultural value, the unintended social costs of algorithmic design, and the tension between personal autonomy and machine-driven relevance.

At its core, this episode asks a simple but urgent question:

What did Meta really build — a social network, or the operating system of modern identity?

By blending narrative storytelling, technical insight, and critical reflection, this series aims to make complex algorithmic systems understandable to a global audience — and to challenge the assumptions that have quietly shaped our digital lives for more than a decade.