✪ Why Trusted Recommendations Are Becoming More Valuable Than New Content - #56
From algorithms to humans: Why taste, discernment and lived experience now matter more than creation.
Lost.
The more I read, the great articles that appear daily on Substack, the more I feel kind of lost. It’s not that I don’t understand it or don’t like what I read. Quite the opposite. There’s so much good stuff, that I am at a loss as to what to follow-up on, research deeper and what to leave behind. I am drowning not because I lack information, but because I lack someone I trust so much that I use him/her as a lighthouse for certain parts of my life journey.
We have entered a strange phase of the digital world where creating something new is no longer the hard part. Anyone can ask a machine to write opinions, summarize books, generate frameworks, or comment on the future with a tone that sounds competent enough.
In an economy where everything is abundant and instantly available, the people who stand out are no longer the ones who produce the most, but the ones who have spent years sharpening their taste. The ones who can look at a chaotic pile of artworks, pictures or ideas and point at the one thing that is really special and that you would have probably missed completely on your own.
This is why recommenders - those who you can trust - are becoming vital contributors to our society and culture. Because when everything is possible, what we need most is someone who can guide us wisely through the possibilities. Someone who can help us see, choose and understand things beyond their surfaces.
But there’s something that most people have been misunderstanding: the value of a recommendation does not come from the object being recommended. It comes from the relationship you have with the person who recommends it.
If I feel some resonance with your values, if I sense that your worldview is compatible with mine, if I’ve watched you explore a topic with curiosity and discipline for long enough, then your picks become doorways into things I didn’t even know were part of my world.
I can give you a very simple example: For many months I attended the communication classes of Prof. Art Hough at San Francisco State University, and the more I got to know the man, inside and outside the class, the more I got fascinated by his knowledge, understanding, advice and especially by his ability to see through my own doodles.
Prof. Hough was perhaps best known for his course “BCA and the Human Potential” which was required of all majors in the Department.
As an outgrowth of the human potential movement, the course was unique to the BECA Department with its focus on in inner communication, interpersonal and professionally-oriented communication. In the course Prof. Hough guided his students to develop personal awareness through the consideration of their personal perspectives of choice, responsibility and their individual self-concept. Students often reported that the concepts they encountered in this class were life-changing.
Dr. Hough served the BECA Department well during his time on the faculty. He was an extremely popular professor and his classes were always full.
He was a man with a commanding presence, but with a gentle soul and a twinkle in his eye that signaled his intellectual curiosity and compassion for others.
I would show new doodles to him during his office hours and he would tell me things about me, my life, and what I was feeling and thinking way beyond what I myself knew or had realized by sketching them.
And because I had learned to trust his eye and his ability to interpret life beyond the surface of things, he became the best book and author recommender I had during what I consider my critical development years.
From Alan Watts, to Gurdjeff, Erich Fromm, passing through Carlos Castaneda, Roberto Assagioli, the spirit of Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead or the Tibetan Book of the Dead, I let his recommendations open so many important doors inside me, I truly didn’t know even existed.
Those books didn’t just expand my thinking. They showed me parts of myself I didn’t know how to access yet, the rebellious ones, the mystical ones, the ones hungry for meaning.
His recommendations were good, but they stuck and made me act, because trust had come before his recommendations. Not the other way around. And this is the part most aspiring curators overlook, and it’s the one that matters the most.
People don’t trust your recommendations because you share them. They trust them because, over time, they have come to trust you. Having seen enough of your path, of your doubts, attempts, inquiries and passions, they have either got bored with who you are or they have got so intrigued, fascinated and curious that your recommendations stick with them longer and deeper. Because those recommendations were certainly not made to show off or to get extra appreciation and recognition, but rather to share high resolution lenses through which to see beyond the immediate horizons.
And there is a consequence to this that is even more important: if you want to be a trusted recommender, you can’t hide behind professional polish. You can’t be only the expert voice. You can’t talk only about business. You can’t present yourself as a perfectly shaped consulting machine that only exists to deliver insights.
If you never show your edges, your hesitations, your experiments, your behind-the-scenes thought processes, I cannot understand the logic behind your choices. So how can I trust you?
You may sound smart, but I have no proof you are invested in anything beyond your own visibility and profit.
It doesn’t work. A recommendation is not a list of links to get a few likes. If you think as I am thinking now, a recommendation you make it’s a piece of yourself.
To make it work, people need to understand where your taste comes from: what has shaped it, what you explore when no one is watching, what you reject instinctively, what catches you off guard, who has influenced you, what kind of life you are trying to build, what you value more than money, and what keeps you awake at night. Without this context, your curated recommendations may look competent, but they really won’t feel trustworthy. And if it doesn’t feel trustworthy, it will never influence anyone in a meaningful way.
Being a trusted recommender is not about collecting interesting things and sharing them with the world. It is about caring (=taking responsibility) for what you bring to people’s attention, and for the journey that led you to select those things in the first place.
It’s not about proving that you know enough to suggest things. It is about letting others opt-in into the journey, the choices and the path you have already taken.
And so it goes that a truly trusted guide requires love for the path sHe is on. But not the decorative kind. The raw, grounded, non-negotiable one. The kind of love that shows, without claiming anything, that sHe is not recommending to show off, but because sHe truly cares about you being able to see deeper.
In synthesis: a trusted recommender does not just share interesting things sHe finds along the way. A trusted recommender allows others to borrow hir night-vision glasses, built around hir unique experience, values and mission, to see deeper inside their life exploration journey.
It is not about proving expertise. It’s about allowing others to opt into the path, the discoveries and the worldview that shaped your judgement and who you have decided to be.
For this to happen you need to let your guard down some. Show a bit of who you are, what values you hold, who are your references, what you are inspired by, and what journey you are on. The more I can get to know you, the easier it becomes for me to feel whether I like what you are about, and if I really want to be influenced by you.
From Links To Recommendations [Video]
Great new video about the future of search in the age of AI and the rise of trusted advisors, guides, recommenders.
Two basic ideas:
a) “Search is a declining asset … Recommendation feeds will grow.”
b) “AI overviews now appear in 30-40% of all search results … and when they show up at the top, clicks go down 20-40%.”.
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Highlights:
Future of search, Google, SEO and visibility online by Tom Critchlow - 20+ years in SEO, manages ~6,000 sites and ~20 billion Google page views per year.
Red light: organic Google (SEO) traffic is already declining for many, and the “what if Google sends zero traffic” scenario (Google Zero) is real.
Big metric: AI overviews now appear in ~30-40% of search results and when present, outbound clicks drop 20-40%. Clicks are dying.
.(12:02) We’re moving from links → recommendations. He explains that the era of “just publish links and rank” is ending and brand/value proposals matter more.
(16:00) Instead of generic “blue links”, we’ll see descriptive AI-context + curated recommendations (“This link is relevant for these five reasons”).
(20:12) In link-centric search you could get traffic even if product is subpar; in recommendation-centric search you cannot recommend bad stuff. This changes advertising and ranking incentives.
(21:48) Search behaviour will change — recommendation/discovery will grow, traditional search clicks will decline further.
The Future of Search & The Death of Links | Tom Critchlow
BRXND
[Duration: 22’:42”]
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Why I recommend it:
Weak strategy warning: Building content purely to become visible and build traffic or subscribers may be increasingly not the best way to go.
The value today is shifting toward clear articulation of what you stand for, of your true competence and authority, and how much you can be trusted and recommended.
Possible shift from “find me via search” to “find me through those who recommend me”, which means building relationships, signals, recognizable character (not polish).
Recommendation Platforms: Real-World Examples
a) Beauty & Fashion Recommendation Storefronts
ShopMy
Not many know about this, but this is an interesting platform where curators and influencers build searchable lifestyle storefronts that showcase their personally recommended products. Shoppers can browse by creator, brand, or curated “Circles,” then click out to retailers to buy. Curators earn commissions via affiliate links. By standardizing how creators compile and maintain product picks and by leveraging multi-curator bundles (Circles), which let shoppers compose their own “department stores” out of trusted voices, ShopMy converts otherwise scattered social recommendations into a durable, searchable recommendation engine.
b) Recommended Music Industry Resources
Stack by Rostr
Here’s a curated collections of tools, resources and services for artists and music industry professionals submitted by industry experts. It helps to find recommendations for vetted tools, resources and experts in the music industry. An essential part of Stack are stacks which are curated lists of recommendations from experts in the music industry. These recommendations include products, services, conferences, freelancers, YouTube channels, books, online resources, IRL resources and more.
c) Good Books Recommended by Great People
ReadThisTwice
Thousands of book recommendations from the most successful and interesting people in the world. Helps book readers to find great titles based on people one already knows or admires.
d) Library of Recommended Videos for Kids
The Kids Should See This
This is an award-winning collection of 6,000+ kid-friendly videos, with specific recommendations curated for teachers and parents. It focuses on history, culture, cultivating curiosity, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, kindness, and other essential themes.
f) Social Magazine for Recommendations
Perfectly Imperfect
World’s first “social magazine” and online community of over 90,000 people around the world who share recommendations for music, films, books, and more. Curated by real people, not algorithms. Find out more about the PI story here.
Check also these recommendations-based newsletters:
Storythings by the homonymous agency in the UK
Glasp by Kei Watanabe and Kazuki Nakayashiki
Humans Trust Humans - Not AI
“Here’s the brutal truth about the cultural moment we’re in: trust in AI systems is fundamentally fragile. When we can’t understand how something works, when the logic is opaque, our confidence erodes. Users report what researchers call “algorithm fatigue”, mental and emotional exhaustion from interacting with systems they can’t decode or control.
But trust in human curators builds through an entirely different mechanism: emotional connection, shared values, and the consistent demonstration of good judgment over time. Research on human-automation trust shows that human-led curation creates bonds that automated systems simply cannot replicate.
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When a brand has genuine taste, a clear point of view, and the courage to be themselves even when it’s not perfectly optimized, that’s when people become fans, not just followers.This explains the explosive growth of platforms like Substack, the migration to private, human-moderated communities, and what cultural observers call “the latest online culture war: humans vs. algorithms.”
People are actively seeking digital spaces shaped by human agency and distinct points of view. They’re fleeing the algorithm, and platforms built on human curation are there with open arms.
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a) The brands that win in the coming decade won’t be perfectly optimized. They’ll be purposefully human.
b) In a world drowning in content sameness, taste is your only unfair advantage. If you don’t define it, you’ll drown in what the algorithm thinks you should be.”
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Source: Priceless Misc - “The Curation Comeback: Why Human Taste Beats Algorithms Every Time”
Interesting Research Data on
Human vs Algorithmic Recommendations
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89% of consumers prioritize recommendations from trusted individuals over traditional advertising or social media influencers. Authenticity, personal connection, and micro-community advocacy are key in driving this trust in human recommendations.
.Source: Retail Times
Studies comparing human-curated versus algorithm-generated content show that people prefer human-curated recommendations, even if algorithmic recommendations sometimes perform better in terms of quantity of results, clearly indicating a sharp preference for human judgment in trusted contexts.
.Source: Arxiv - “An Analysis of Trust in Human versus Algorithmically ...” (PDF)
Surveys on online trust find that personal recommendations from friends and family are highest in trustworthiness (78%), far exceeding trust in ads, celebrities, or strangers online. People rely more on human-curated, personalized insights than algorithm-driven data.
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Source: EMI RS - “Who Do We Trust Online? Insights on Recommendations and Trust Levels”
Surveys and studies show users often distrust recommender systems for inaccurate suggestions; thus, trust-aware and transparent recommendation models are being developed, but challenges remain in bridging trust gaps between users and systems.
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Sources: ScienceDirect - “A survey for trust-aware recommender systems: A deep learning perspective”Arxiv - “A Comprehensive Survey on Trustworthy Recommender Systems”
Studies on perceptions of algorithm fairness, transparency, and trust beliefs highlight that consumers’ trust in recommendation systems is not only about algorithmic accuracy but also about the perceived benevolence, competence, and integrity of the system or provider, influencing structural assurance in AI applications.
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Source: ScienceDirect - “Do consumers’ perceptions of algorithms and trusting beliefs in providers affect perceived structural assurances of AI-powered applications?”
An algorithm recommends you what you want, reinforcing your existing preferences.
A human curator allows you to discover what you might love, but didn’t know existed, expanding your horizons.
How This Connects To The Rest:
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What I Can Do For You
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a) Help You Create Value and Build Trust - for Non-Writers (Curation)
I assist you in identifying and mastering your own personal ways to gain authority and value by curating insights, research, news, resources and tools in your field of interest.
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b) Improve Your Credibility and Trust
Analysis of your content, positioning and goals to identify key editorial strategies to create content that best aligns with your competence and that rapidly builds trust and credibility around your focus.
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c) Positioning and Personal Branding
Critical review of your market positioning to identify key strengths and weaknesses. Define strategy to differentiate yourself from the competition while increasing the practical value you bring to your readers.
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Interested?
Send me a direct message.
Follow a path with a heart.
From Koh Samui (TH)
Robin Good
Thank you for featuring about glasp.co, Robin :)
Thank you for recommending Glasp, Robin!