This book focuses on how people in Costa Rica live with algorithms. More specifically, the author studies how Netflix, Spotify, and TikTok users in that country associate with those platforms.

The book is divided into seven chapters. The introductory chapter is on datafication, which involves taking all aspects of life and turning them into data. Developments in big data and predictive analytics have enabled this. The author begins with an interesting and often asked question: “What does it mean to live in a ‘datafied’ society?” The author opines that “companies extract and exploit data to shape the lives of users.” The increasing influence of algorithms on daily life is pointed out. Some examples include finding the most suitable routes for commuting, the most engrossing messages on social media, the most agreeable people on social networks, the most pertinent songs and television serials, and the most relevant books to read. The author brings up interesting phrases: surveillance capitalism, platform capitalism, and data colonialism.

The second chapter is on personalization, which refers to “the ways in which communication relationships between users and algorithmic platforms are built.” The author looks at personalization as a communication process. Three dynamics of personalization are considered: interpellation, personification, and relationships. The third chapter is on integration. Here, the focus is on “how algorithmic recommendations are combined in a matrix of cultural resources.” The primary focus is on “how users integrate algorithmic recommendations into the structure of their daily lives.”

The fourth chapter is on rituals, that is, “how users enact the centrality of algorithmic platforms through patterned actions in their daily lives.” The author concludes “that the power of algorithmic platforms relies on the unceasing reproduction of rituals.” The fifth chapter is on conversion. The author refers to the transformation of people’s personal relationships with algorithms into a public issue. The author feels that “it involves displaying, sharing, and discussing recommendations with others”; it also calls for “certain skills, practices, and resources.”

The sixth chapter is on resistance. In this case, resistance denotes how people issue a challenge to several aspects of algorithmic platforms. The author states that although users in Costa Rica treasure algorithmic platforms, they also tend to criticize and challenge some aspects of how they work. The discussion is of course concentrated only on users of Netflix, Spotify, and TikTok. The last chapter on mutual domestication “discusses the implications of the evidence presented in the book for theorizing about the relationship between users and algorithms.” The book includes an appendix on research design, a handy index, as well as sufficient references.

There is no doubt that algorithms are playing an increasingly important role in everyday life (see [1,2,3,4]). Social platforms are widely used all over the world. Examples include platforms such as Netflix, Spotify, and TikTok, though Netflix is usually regarded more as a streaming platform than a social media platform. This book offers a glimpse of the position of algorithms in Costa Rican culture by considering just these three platforms. Anyone interested in exploring the influence of algorithms, and especially algorithmic platforms, on the general public may read this book and benefit.