2025-11-29

assumptions in apps

let me decide what's best for me

I

Screenshot of Apple Podcasts "Browse" section showing two promotional banners: "2025 IN REVIEW" and "BEST OF 2025" with colorful starburst and bar chart graphics. The interface suggests a curated year-end selection of top podcasts.

oh, best podcasts of 2025 list in my apple podcasts app? great! let's see if i can find some great new things from the vast world of podcasts.

Screenshot of the Apple Podcasts "Best of 2025" page revealing Apple's editorial picks. Notably, all eight featured podcasts are German language shows, including "Die Peter Thiel Story," "Was Bisher Geschah," "Firewall" (Der Spiegel), and "God Code: Macht. KI. Drama." Despite being a global platform's "best of" list, the entire selection consists exclusively of German content across categories like True Crime, History, Comedy, and Documentary.

oh, they are all from germany!

the idealist and cosmopolite i am, i expected podcasts from all around the world under the "best podcasts" section. at least english speaking podcasts, given the english title of the campaign.

of course, when i've originally opened my app store account, i've set the region to germany and that's why apple shows me german podcasts. i don't live in germany anymore. even worse in some sense, i am not listening to german-speaking podcasts at all.

II

starting in late 2024, i noticed chatgpt and claude subtly changed their behaviors. i had a hunch they knew the physical location i am prompting from. this hunch turned out to be true.

i consider the steering of llms the most crucial skill for white-collar workers. providing information, or rather, assumptions automatically to the llm is like a backseat driver who grabs the steering wheel and yanks it left, assuming you wanted to turn that way.

ok, i might've gone too far with the analogy there. though, the fact that i could feel a vibe shift in the answers i got is enough reason for me to be ticked off by this.

i am very aware that 2025 llms have a slight american and liberal bent by default. i consider this a feature, not a bug. knowing the default behavior, its vanilla vibe, is a crucial part effective coworking with llms.

III

chatgpt and claude have a "memory" feature, which automatically provides the llm information from previous chats. this feature also changes the vibe of the answers you get back. i have no qualms with the feature though, as you can just turn it off, to get back to the default behavior.

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