The day we deleted the algorithm
It was a Tuesday morning in late 2023 when our lead product designer walked into the office and said, 'We're shipping without it.' She meant the algorithm. We'd spent six weeks building a recommendation engine. It was competent. It would have kept people scrolling longer. And we decided to throw it away.
What we built, and why it felt wrong
The algorithm in question was fairly standard stuff. It would learn what channels you followed, analyze dwell time on different creators, and start nudging you toward content it thought you'd engage with. Nothing sinister. Just the familiar logic of every major platform: predict what will hold your attention, then serve it.
We'd built it because that's what media apps do. It's the machinery everyone expects. Users are used to it. Publishers understand it. And honestly, it's easier to ship than the alternative.
But then something happened that changed everything. A customer named Marcus wrote to us mid-beta. He said, 'I set an intention to watch one video essay about industrial design. Your app is now recommending me three more I never asked for. That's exactly what I'm trying to escape.' He wasn't angry. He was confused. Why had we built an intentional media app only to undermine intention with automation?
That message sat with us for days.
The friction of actual choice
Removing the algorithm meant accepting something uncomfortable: friction. When you open Intentr, you decide what you want to consume before you start. No surprises. No algorithmic serendipity. No 'you might also like.' Just the channels you've chosen to follow, shown in the order you arranged them.
It's slower. It's more deliberate. And yes, it means people scroll less.
But that's the point. We'd realized we were solving the wrong problem. Everyone else is optimizing for consumption volume. We were building for people who wanted to know exactly where their attention went and why. The moment you introduce an algorithm, you've introduced a middleman. And that middleman will always, eventually, prioritize engagement metrics over your stated intention.
So we ripped it out. Completely. The channels you follow are the content you see. You curate. You decide. No system second-guesses you in the background.
What replaced it, and why creators benefited most
The real revelation came when we looked at what this meant for creators. Traditional platforms use algorithms to decide which creators get amplified and which don't. It's a lottery. Two creators posting similar work see wildly different reach depending on algorithmic favor.
In Intentr, there is no lottery. If someone follows your channel, they see your work. Period. You're not competing for algorithmic placement. You're not gaming metrics to win visibility. You're building trust directly with people who chose to follow you.
That's why we built the creator revenue model the way we did. Creators get 85% of subscription revenue from their followers. Not from ads. Not from engagement farming. From people who paid to access better tools and follow more channels. The business model aligns with actual value, not algorithmic attention.
We've watched this play out with creators who came to us from platforms that had deprioritized their work. They're stunned. Not by millions of views, but by the fact that every view comes from someone who deliberately chose to see their content. That's a different relationship entirely.
The features that make deletion possible
Without an algorithm, you need infrastructure that helps people stay intentional. That's why Intentr has a session intention feature at its core. Before you consume, you set a purpose. Maybe it's 'learn about typography' or 'decompress for 20 minutes.' The app bounds your session and tracks your attention ledger, so you can see exactly what you spent time on and whether it matched your intention.
It sounds simple. It's remarkably difficult to maintain in practice, which is why the ledger matters. It creates accountability. Not from us, from you. You see the gap between what you meant to do and what you actually did. Then you adjust.
For power users, we added connected sources. You can pull in RSS feeds, podcasts, YouTube channels as if they were Intentr channels. You're still choosing what gets added. You're still in control. But you're not siloed into one platform.
The free version gives you three sessions a day, five channels to follow, and seven days of ledger history. It's enough to feel the difference. The Plus tier removes those limits and adds the connected sources. No paywalls between you and an algorithm that wasn't there anyway.
Why this matters more than we expected
Here's what we didn't anticipate: the absence of an algorithm became Intentr's defining feature. It's not a technical innovation. It's a design decision with moral weight.
We live in an era where every major platform has optimized to the point of invisibility. The algorithm doesn't feel like a choice anymore. It feels inevitable. So when someone experiences a media app where they actually control what they see, it lands with surprising force. People tell us it feels radical. It just feels like choice.
The paradox is that removing the algorithm didn't make Intentr worse. It made it clearer. Creators know where they stand. Users know what they're getting. We know we're not caught between two masters. We're not optimizing for watch time while pretending to respect intention.
Deleting that algorithm was the easiest hard decision we've made.
If every media app removed their algorithm tomorrow, would we be more bored, or would we finally know what we actually wanted to watch?
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