How do we live, or rather cope, with algorithms? Ignacio Siles wrote a book about it, Living With Algorithms, Agency and User Culture in Costa Rica (MIT Press, 2023). I met Ignacio Siles in San Jose in April 2025 when I had the honor to open the academic year of the University of Costa Rica with a speech on platform blues and their alternatives. Siles works at UCR as professor of Media and Technology Studies in the School of Communication. I was shown around campus accommodating 50.000 students. What impressed me most were vast radio and television studios that broadcast 24/7 with actual transmitters and antennas that serve the entire country. It was explained to me that over the decade the Costa Rica middle class society preferred the enlightened neutral university information over contested public broadcasting. What if internet, worldwide, had developed into this direction, I wondered. In fact, Ignacio Siles’ first book deals with early internet history in Central America. His second is a comparative study of the Web 2.0 period and contrasts blogging in the United States with France.

The email interview below deals with Ignacio Siles’ third book on the current age of platforms that maps Costa Rica user cultures of Netflix, Spotify and Tik-Tok. Living with Algorithms is a quantitative study, based on interviews with app users, conducted right before Covid and then turned into a book during the pandemic.

Siles makes clear that platforms only exist because of the personalization of information. Otherwise they would just be mega-large websites that have to navigated through search. As we lazy bastards know, the cumbersome query has been replaced by the never-ending incoming streams of well-meant suggestions of our dear old friend the Algo. The apps investigated are exactly not oversized databases. They are unique recommendation machines for your eyes only. While Siles mostly uses uncontroversial social science type mediastudies notions and sources one stands out: algorithmic interpellation. In Althusser-style users users feel that they addressed in a personal way. Netflix is speaking directly to them. Spotify knows their intimate music taste for every situation. TikTok is there to cheer them up.  It is through this process of calling in which users are personally addressed and feel human again. This is a vital moment for corporations as their business proposition is essentially regressive: Netflix bent interactive visual media back into the televisual mode much in the same why as Spotify turned piracy websites such as Napster into a paid service (without rewarding musicians). And TikTok did the same to funny YouTube videos by shrinking their length and eliminating choice—all three turning dead  phone time into a smooth ‘trending now’ experience.

The book is structured along six lines of investigations: datafication, personalization, integration, rituals, conversion and resistance. The overall impression you get after reading Siles is a rather docile relation of ordinary users towards dominant apps of the global North. Costa Rica as postmodern paradise of permanent appropriation?

Yes, they tend to force algorithms to comply with local taste and traditions of social interactions but that’s a far cry from a proud autonomous attitude. If this is changing lately under Trump II is a matter that’s addressed in the interview. There’s a clear desire to be part of the North-American sphere of content on all three apps. Seles remains diplomatic towards his fellow citizens and hesitates to address the dark sides of the phone use such as from addiction and mental health issues, fake news and clickbait to state surveillance and distribution of malware. Instead, he develops the ‘cultural studies’ type explanation that he calls ‘mutual domestication’.

How power operates in the age of platforms is best described in Seles’ chapter on rituals. It describes users’ deep appreciation of Netflix recommendations and the emotional relationship towards the creation and maintenance of Spotify playlists.  Living with Algorithms is best read in 20-50 years as explanation how average users in a Central American country complied to dominant platform monopolies. How did we get used to machines that provide us with automated care? Not a trace of anti-imperialist attitudes to overthrow Big Tech extractivism. Even in the chapter on resistance, it is only about resistance inside the app against certain injustices of Big Daddy Algo (also known as biases).

The story of the datafication of the global South is one of subtle seduction and implicit submission. No brutal subjection. Today’s platforms know how to intimately become part of people’s everyday life. Satisfying lo popular means crafting content, translating it all into Spanish, while not missing out on trending series, albums and influencer aesthetics from elsewhere. Not a trace of digital sovereignty or techno-diversity. Where is the self-confident attitude towards Taylor Swift (also in Europe as content subjugation is by no means a Latin-American deviation). It is hundreds of millions of users that are ‘domesticated’ here, a picture-perfect example of how Bernard Stiegler describes individuation and the pharmacological attitude of the world towards online services that are both toxic and healing. “I know that TikTok gives me content just for me.  I feel special, I feel that it’s giving me attention, things just for me.”

Geert Lovink: In this book you are quite in a defensive mode. Somehow you feel a need to defend the average user in Costa Rica from the critique that they are somehow average wanna-be American consumers that enjoy Netflix, Spotify, TikTok but probably also Facebook and Instagram. YouTube and a lot more that the platforms have on offer. Your argument reminds me a bit of the mid 1980s British-Australian Cultural Studies that felt the need to defend and explain media consumption of the working class (which at that was in a crisis but still existed). True? I mean, maybe most Costa Ricans are complicit. They are both object of Silicon Valley extrativism and willing subject that enjoy all the online entertainment. We all are. Or is there a difference here in terms of a different techno-colonial position?

Ignacio Siles: Without a doubt, there is a reivindication in the book (which could also be read as a form of “defense”): to take what happens in a Central American country as a site from which to think about the broader techno-cultural moment we are living through. The reivindication/defense is to treat what happens in Costa Rica not as an exception, not as an exotic occurrence, not as a curiosity, but as a crucial and relevant opportunity to think about the relationship between algorithms and culture in ways that have implications beyond Central America. I believe this case holds valuable lessons for understanding that relationship not only for those who approach these issues from the so-called Global North, but also for those who study Latin America, who tend to focus predominantly on the region’s larger countries.

In this regard, the project also intersects with the tradition of cultural studies. There is a shared concern in our agendas: to turn assumptions about the power of media and technology into a research question rather than a starting point. The field of Communication and Media Studies has long been marked by a tendency to return, time and again, to the same questions about the presumed power of media to affect society, questions that often reveal more about its fascination with technology than with people. In this book, I sought (perhaps inspired by the cultural studies project) to suspend some of those assumptions, to pause, and to go into the field in order to grapple with the contradictions, complexities, and ambivalences that shape how people relate to algorithmic platforms designed in Silicon Valley, Europe, and China. The specificity of my case was to ask what it means to act in relation to algorithms from a country whose economic and cultural ties with places like Silicon Valley are themselves very particular.

GL: You did this research 5+ years ago and then wrote the book during Covid. This is the post-Covid period and we’re well into the Trump II era. How do you see the use in Costa Rica of Netflix, Spotify and TikTok has changed since 2018?

IS: The relationship with algorithmic platforms is ambivalent. On the one hand, people often voice concerns about issues such as the circulation of disinformation on social media and the amount of time these platforms “demand” from them. I would say these are two of the concerns I most frequently hear in interviews and focus groups nowadays. Such concerns reflect a much deeper shift: in my more recent studies, I find growing evidence of what I call greater “algorithmic reflexivity,” that is, a constant awareness that the experience of these platforms results from ongoing interaction with algorithms (particularly among younger populations). This differs from the situation a few years ago, when people rarely questioned how these platforms recommended content to them.

On the other hand, I consider it ambivalent because, despite these concerns and evidence of greater reflexivity, the use of algorithmic platforms has not ceased to grow in recent years. This suggests that people believe they are capable of counteracting the potential risks of platform use that worry them most. The use of media such as Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp in Costa Rica is among the highest in Latin America and continues to increase every year. TikTok and Instagram are also growing steadily. Perhaps the most revealing example is that, despite the profound changes in algorithmic moderation, business model, and political orientation that followed its acquisition by Elon Musk, the use of Twitter/X has remained stable over the past two years.

GL: In what state of affairs is your country at the moment? In your book you’re rather mild about Costa Rica’s view on Silicon Valley and the dominant US extractivism/data colonialism model?

IS: Costa Rica’s relationship with the philosophy underpinning places like Silicon Valley is complex. First, because historically the country has embraced a self-perceived cultural proximity to the United States as part of its “exceptionalism.” This has meant that Costa Rica’s cultural life remains strongly oriented toward the values embodied by U.S. cultural industries, including Silicon Valley’s technological logic. Second, over the past 30 years, Costa Rica has established itself as one of the leading per capita producers of high technology in Latin America. This has been the result of national efforts to promote the export of technological products and to attract multinational corporations to the country, as part of a broader process of economic liberalization triggered by the crisis of the 1980s. As a result, Costa Ricans have incorporated into their national identity the notion that technology is both culturally and economically beneficial. My argument is that the process through which technology has become the country’s economic engine has also had cultural repercussions: technology lies at the heart of the nation’s contemporary cultural identity, serving as a lens through which the country imagines itself and everything it aspires to be. Interestingly, this process has received little attention from historians and social scientists more broadly.

GL: Is it justified that everything changed due to the democratization of machine learning and large language models? Would you also say that we use algorithm-driven apps in a different way?

IS: I tend to be skeptical of declarations about constant “revolutions” in communications and technology. To me, one of the shortcomings of our field is precisely this habit of reinventing the theoretical wheel every time a new technology comes along. What I find more productive are approaches that focus on evolution rather than revolution, on continuities in how people use technologies over longer periods. That’s why I still find theoretical perspectives like “domestication” useful, as well as the more qualitative work on audiences, the political economy of communication, and even approaches from science and technology studies. These frameworks help us see technological change in a more nuanced, historically contingent way. And my own research agenda is really about situating so-called “revolutionary” platforms and services within a broader matrix of existing technologies, practices, and institutions. That said, it’s clear that changes are happening all around us, especially with the rise of generative AI. For anyone involved in formal education, for example, the classroom experience is no longer the same as it was just two or three years ago.

GL: Your book reminds me of Rober Pfaller’s concept called interpassivity. According to Pfaller this attitude and techno-system-design comes up in response to the crisis of interactivity (and the related exhaustion and boredom). All three of the apps you chose are driven by this implicit desire to quit doing so much and just sit and watch, and listen. TikTok is the best example of this trend of the televisualization of social media. There might be some agency in terms of personal choice, yes, but by and large it is sitting and enjoying the content that comes by – chosen by Big Dadday Algorithm.

IS: I am not familiar with Pfaller’s work, but I find the notion of “interpassivity” very suggestive because it evokes ideas of fluidity and change. To make sense of the case of TikTok, I personally found Antoine Hennion’s notion of “active passivity” especially inspiring (he is my favorite among the thinkers associated with Actor-Network Theory). Hennion emphasizes the need to understand agency as the result of constant shifts, redistributions, or what he calls “passages.” Rather than assuming a passive subject from the outset, this perspective invites us to think of subjectivity as the outcome of “passages” in which new capacities emerge and are reconfigured, where one is passive and active in different ways, moments, and degrees.

Undoubtedly, there is a point at which people merely “sit and enjoy content chosen by an algorithm,” but reaching that point paradoxically requires a great deal of activity. The sense that one can “let everything in the hands of algorithms,” as one interviewee in my research aptly put it, only arises after continuous exchanges involving active engagement with the platform. And it’s never a final state of affairs. It’s always temporary. Sustaining it will require constant adjustments and active engagement. For this reason, I think this should not be mistaken for inaction. It is closer to what Hennion means by “active passivity”: it is not about moving from activity to passivity, but about acting in order to be acted upon by algorithms.

GL: In this turbulent, recent period, do you see a rise in the desire for some form of digital sovereignty? I know it is not easy to imagine, let alone implement. Don’t get me wrong, Europe is hopeless in this respect. The old continent is in the firm hands of Microsoft, Google and Meta, with zero clue what to do about the US AI onslaught and the Chinese hardware tech domination. In that sense, your book could also have been called Coping with Silicon Valley Platform… But it’s not. Are also hopeful in terms of the coming necessity for Costa Rica to become more tech-independent? It’s not entirely impossible, right?

IS: I would argue that the opposite occurs, for a very particular reason: technologies are seen as a way to achieve cultural “closeness” or “proximity.” To make this argument, I turn to the work of Ted Porter. In his excellent book Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life, Porter famously argued that quantification is a technology of “distance” that allows phenomena to be seen from afar. I think users in countries such as Costa Rica value algorithmic platforms for the opposite reason: they make them feel closer to a world they aspire to be part of. They value algorithmic platforms as a technology of “proximity” that helps them feel connected to global conversations about culture and technology.

Thus, having access to more technologies is seen as a way to shorten the distance to the rest of the world, even if that means bearing “the costs of connection,” to borrow from Couldry and Mejías’ elegant phrase. Algorithmic technologies allow people to be part of this specific world while simultaneously living in Costa Rica. I have come across arguments about “digital irritation” and even “digital resignation,” which suggest that, deep down, people despise fundamental aspects of how platforms work but feel they have no choice other than to live with them. Of course, that describes some of the attitudes I’ve come across in my research. But I would argue that the situation in Costa Rica can also be different: there is a relative openness to these types of companies because they are seen as economic development opportunities. Amazon is one of the country’s main private employers. At the same time, these technologies are embraced insofar as they are perceived as relatively “neutral” enablers of cultural proximity with the rest of the world, at least the part that revolves around the United States.

GL: The next 2025 meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers will be in Brazil. Have you been to Latin-American media theory and internet studies lately? What are the tendencies that you see here, apart from the obvious one, like the shift to AI?

IS: I celebrate the fact that such an inspiring conference as AoIR is coming to Latin America, and I am grateful to the organizing committee for their efforts to make the event more accessible. The costs of this type of activity are often prohibitive for many researchers in the region.

I see Latin American research on media and technology as caught in a tension between two approaches/“ideal types”. On the one hand, I think we often see a tendency to bring in concepts and theories developed mainly in the global North to explain what’s happening in the global South. This could be described as “dependency,” “tropicalization,” or even “appropriation.” It usually rests on a few assumptions: that every time a new technology comes along we need to reinvent the wheel theoretically, that theories/concepts coming out of the North can just be applied elsewhere as if they were universal, and that because we all use the same platforms, we should expect the same results.

One outcome of these “dependency/tropicazalition” tendencies is that we often end up reproducing certain ideas without really questioning them. As a result, there’s been a tendency to take for granted (rather than actually investigate) whether concepts like “surveillance capitalism,” “platform capitalism,” or even “datafication” really capture the region’s realities. In the same way, the concept of “platformization” has also been widely, and sometimes uncritically, adopted.

On the other hand, there’s also a lot of work being done that really situates itself in local realities and pushes back against these assumptions. Latin America has a long history of its own intellectual traditions in the study of media and technology. The problem is that much of this work hasn’t really reached international audiences, largely because it’s published in Portuguese or Spanish and remains inaccessible to many readers abroad. A good example is the research on “gig workers” and how platform economies reshape labor. That scholarship doesn’t just apply concepts from elsewhere; it develops its own frameworks and typologies based on local contexts and intellectual traditions. For me, both approaches are useful. Still, I would argue that what we need more of are studies that are really designed, both theoretically and methodologically, to engage with the particular realities of Latin America.

GL: Can you tell us something about your current students, the courses you’re giving and research that you have conducted recently?

IS: My teaching focuses on two main areas: communication theory and the sociocultural implications of digital technologies. Our undergraduate program in Communication Studies at Universidad de Costa Rica is primarily designed to provide students with professional and practical training in areas such as audiovisual communication, journalism, public relations, advertising, and social communication. At the same time, it includes an important theoretical and methodological component. We don’t have a doctoral program in Communication, but we do have very curious undergraduate students who get involved in research projects. Working with them is always fascinating because of their curiosity and sharpness.

Right now, I’m starting to write a co-authored book that looks at how users experience platform power in streaming services across four countries: Brazil, Costa Rica, France, and the United States. In my own research, I’m digging deeper into two themes that emerged from my previous project: reflexivity and temporality. I want to better understand what it means to interact with algorithmic platforms in a state of almost constant reflexivity, and how people experience time through their engagement with these platforms.