Samuel W. Bennett

Recommender systems (RSs) on platforms like Netflix and Spotify personalize user experiences but also raise concerns about their impact on aesthetic welfare. This paper evaluates two important arguments against RS-driven platforms. The satisfaction argument claims that RSs harm aesthetic welfare by steering users toward profitable content that is less satisfying because it is less aligned with their personal tastes. I argue that while RS-driven platforms may exhibit a bias toward promoting profitable content, they are unlikely to do so aggressively enough to significantly harm user satisfaction, as such a strategy carries inherent risks and offers uncertain profit advantages compared to catering to users’ existing preferences. Moreover, even if RSs consistently steer engagement toward profitable content that diverges from a user’s personal taste, they would likely need to reshape user preferences in the process to maintain engagement. In such cases, aesthetic enjoyment would remain largely intact, as the altered taste would align with the promoted content. The autonomy argument suggests that RSs push users into patterns of aesthetic engagement that conflict with their core aesthetic values – such as those who prefer niche or non-mainstream content – due to apparent RS biases favoring popular and mainstream material. I contend that such authenticity concerns are not particularly worrisome when the core value in question lacks independent normative significance. For example, there is no strong reason to claim that aesthetic users should or need to engage with non-mainstream content. Ultimately, this paper challenges claims about the harms of RS-driven platforms, arguing that their impact on aesthetic well-being is less significant than often assumed.

This paper argues for a stronger moral duty to limit smartphone use than those proposed in existing literature, which primarily ground the duty of self-moderation in obligations to oneself, such as protecting one’s autonomy. Drawing on cases like a distracted anesthesiologist causing a patient’s death, a teenager texting while driving leading to a fatal accident, and a mother neglecting her child at a waterpark, I highlight the potential harms to others associated with smartphone use in critical situations. Additionally, routine smartphone use often leads to interpersonal harms, as illustrated by a seven-year-old lamenting her parents’ phone use and a college student experiencing improved interactions after their boyfriend broke their phone. I argue that using a smartphone for multiple hours a day has a significant tendency to foster various morally problematic dispositions. The principle underlying this argument is that if a routine significantly tends to lead to morally problematic dispositions, we have a moral duty to avoid it unless justified by overriding reasons or sufficient evidence of exemption. This significant tendency is defined by two conditions: (1) the probability of acquiring a morally problematic disposition given the routine is significantly greater than the probability without it, and (2) this probability is high enough that the disposition does not require a special explanation beyond the routine itself. Routine smartphone use meets these criteria, contributing to behaviors such as phubbing, reduced face-to-face engagement, influencing others to adopt frequent usage, and diminishing autonomy. These tendencies provide a strong pro tanto moral reason to avoid routine smartphone use for multiple hours a day.