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Just look at one of the best platforms for "fun and weird" - YouTube. The algorithm aggressively promotes freshness (things posted in the past few hours for ce

Just look at one of the best platforms for "fun and weird" - YouTube. The algorithm aggressively promotes freshness (things posted in the past few hours for certain queries!) and 10+ minute long videos. Every algorithm change directly impacts what creators, create, because no one wants to put in a whole lot of work for something to never be seen. If, for example, the ideal format for a joke or video is 3 minutes, that either gets disappeared from public view or becomes part of a longer video. The real answer, in my opinion, is that current recommendation engines prioritize profit rather than quality or innovation. Or perhaps their evaluation metrics are so bad that their goal is misunderstood. Or perhaps those who stand to profit have become too adept at gaming algorithms (or human psychology e.g. lewd thumbnails) that they degrade results. ...or perhaps we all suffer from nostalgia and forget how terrible the results were of yesteryear. Who knows, all I know is I feel disappointed in what the internet has become. Even this thread is really just an ad, hijacking our biases and climbing the HN ranks accordingly.

_gabe_ 4y ago
> The algorithm aggressively promotes freshness (things posted in the past few hours for certain queries!) and 10+ minute long videos. I mostly agree, but there are some counterexamples that provide very in depth, quality information and have gotten popular because of it. Off the top of my head, Ben Eater, Sebastian Lague, 3Blue1Brown, and Reducible. I think it's still very possible to get stuff that doesn't fit into the algorithm to take off if you make it interesting and high quality :)
ayngg 4y ago
The internet has changed from communities of interest to communities of people who commoditize social interaction within those interests. On the surface they seem fairly close to actual communities but they incentivize different things which changes how the community operates and personally I think they don't provide many of the healthy benefits of communities while cultivating some pretty unhealthy behavior loops.
- standardly 4y ago
  You just described Reddit, right?
  - ayngg 4y ago
    Basically every "community" that has some emphasis on a voting/ like system. So yeah Reddit and most of the large social media communities like Tiktok, Twitter and so on. Even HN probably has similar effects although they aren't as pronounced.

_gabe_ 4y ago

> The algorithm aggressively promotes freshness (things posted in the past few hours for certain queries!) and 10+ minute long videos. I mostly agree, but there are some counterexamples that provide very in depth, quality information and have gotten popular because of it. Off the top of my head, Ben Eater, Sebastian Lague, 3Blue1Brown, and Reducible. I think it's still very possible to get stuff that doesn't fit into the algorithm to take off if you make it interesting and high quality :)

ayngg 4y ago

The internet has changed from communities of interest to communities of people who commoditize social interaction within those interests. On the surface they seem fairly close to actual communities but they incentivize different things which changes how the community operates and personally I think they don't provide many of the healthy benefits of communities while cultivating some pretty unhealthy behavior loops.

standardly 4y ago
You just described Reddit, right?
- ayngg 4y ago
  Basically every "community" that has some emphasis on a voting/ like system. So yeah Reddit and most of the large social media communities like Tiktok, Twitter and so on. Even HN probably has similar effects although they aren't as pronounced.