Personalization as Policy: Tech Efforts to Privatize the Public Problem of Discoverability

Background: This article uses critical discourse analysis to identify how large tech firms shaped Canadian policy debates on algorithmic “discoverability.”

Analysis: Drawing on parliamentary testimony and submissions from YouTube and Netflix, we find that the companies advocated for an understanding of discoverability as concerning export economies and consumer choice, effectively invisibilizing concerns over Canada’s cultural or digital sovereignty.

Conclusions and implications: These framing strategies seek to portray discoverability as a privatized consumer concern, thereby shielding proprietary algorithms from governmental mandates. Algorithmic personalization and discoverability have now been pushed to the back burner of policy debates, with unclear consequences for Canadian cultural content producers/consumers.