The Single Algorithm of Global Pop Culture

Source: la Repubblica – “The New Soft Power Is Born: A Single Algorithm for Global Pop Culture”, 6 December 2025

The new entertainment giant and the risk of a centralised algorithmic culture

According to la Repubblica, 2025 marks a historic turning point: Netflix has acquired a significant portion of the Warner Bros. Discovery catalogue, absorbing narrative universes such as Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Batman and The Matrix. The merger creates an unprecedented critical mass: a global content archive and a single algorithm capable of shaping tastes, imagination and cultural consumption for billions of people.

The issue is not merely commercial. The article emphasises how this move reshapes the balance of power in the global cultural industry: for the first time, a private algorithm may become the lens through which the entire world sees—and desires—its pop culture.

Digital soft power: when an algorithm becomes a geopolitical weapon

Hollywood has always produced dreams, but now its power is computational. The union of Netflix and Warner creates an algorithmic soft power:

• a system that decides what is visible and what disappears,

• which genres are promoted and which are abandoned,

• which productions gain European, African, Asian or Latin American exposure,

• which stories become “global” and which remain marginal.

This is no longer about exporting films, but about exporting models of the world. And when those models depend on a single operator, the risk of cultural concentration becomes evident.

Creativity under pressure: consequences for producers, artists and audiences

In the interview included in the article, producer Benedetto Habib speaks of a difficult future for independent creators: the algorithm of a dominant platform tends to reward more uniform content, suited to a global audience, penalising experimentation, diversity and minority languages.

For audiences, this means that:

• narratives become homogenised,

• the range of offerings narrows around dominant tastes,

• local creativity risks evaporating.

The algorithm shifts from being a tool to becoming a cultural filter.

Why this concerns digital rights: culture as essential infrastructure

The article does not explicitly address rights, but what is at stake is clear: when a handful of platforms control access to culture, they also control the forms of collective imagination.

This is a core issue that Algopolio recognises as crucial:

• those who control algorithms control the visibility of works;

• those who control catalogues control which stories are told;

• those who control user data decide what becomes “successful”.

This concentration is not only economic; it is epistemic.

Algopolio’s role: defending pluralism and autonomy in the age of algorithmic entertainment

Algopolio works to ensure that platform power does not translate into a loss of cultural freedom. Because culture is not a catalogue to be optimised: it is the space in which a society imagines itself. And no algorithm should decide on its own who we are—and what we dream.