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In fact, the "customized feed for you" does one thing really well. It treats you exactly like it learned to treat someone "like you" from the past. So what it

by basch 4y ago

In fact, the "customized feed for you" does one thing really well. It treats you exactly like it learned to treat someone "like you" from the past. So what it really does is regurgitate an old, stale, pattern. In some sense, it prevents you from finding new experiences, keeping society frozen in time, repeating the behavior sequences of those before them, the pioneers and trailblazers that define the relationships early. Im a broken record with how often I cite this article, but any chance I get where it is relevant it is worth exposing people to. And this thread is that moment. https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7... The other thing algorithmic feeds, and even some sites like buzzfeed do, is generate strings of nonsense. This isnt quite a new phenomenon, but started in the 80s with MTV. "Whereas variety shows and televised concerts in the 1960s and 70s provided context and structure to the music they presented, MTV instead gave viewers a rapid succession of wildly different sounds and visual accompaniments to those sounds, without any logic connecting one video to another." https://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5730762/buzzfeeds-founder-used-to-write-marxist-theory-and-it-explains https://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5730762/buzzfeeds-founder-used... Compare America's funniest home videos, with a host, callbacks, and even a basic narrative structure to tiktok. At least Tiktok accomplishes SOME of the culture missing from prior products on the market in the last decade by inviting people to remix videos with the same audio.

hultee 4y ago
Great article! Thanks
411111111111111 4y ago
> So what it really does is regurgitate an old, stale, pattern. In some sense, it prevents you from finding new experiences, keeping society frozen in time, repeating the behavior sequences of those before them, the pioneers and trailblazers that define the relationships early. The part about keeping society frozen in time is contradictory to the rest of the text. It's leading people on to the extreme end, so a conspiracy theorist will become even more of one etc. A frozen society would be unchanging... But it does change as extreme ideas spread like never before.
- ericd 4y ago
  Right, the brain seems to have a heuristic that if it hears/sees/etc the same thing, it makes it believe it more. Like if you’ve heard two different people spout the same wrong thing, you’re quite likely to start believing it. So if you’re fed the same thing over and over due to your YouTube persona bucket, you probably become a more devout believer, for better or worse. Receiving a smattering of different opinions probably keeps you in a better place in terms of remaining critical. Maybe staying in a skeptical frame of mind helps inoculate against this somewhat, because you go through the exercise of trying to find counter evidence at the same time, so that you’re essentially feeding your own brain conflicting messages. But that takes effort unless you’re already in the habit. Something to keep in mind, regardless of how correct you think your habitual info channels are. If dissent is stamped out, like it is on many subreddits and Twitter, that’s a pretty bad sign.
  - switchbak 4y ago
    That's a good point - we have to be confronted with opinions we don't agree with such that we maintain our mental muscles for reasoning about why some ideas are wrong/bad. Otherwise if we're only fed a stream of things we agree with, that can be used to smuggle in bad/wrong ideas without our knowing it or having much ability to confront it. Not to mention that every once in a while you're confronted with some challenging ideas that compel a change in worldview in a positive way!
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
> So what it really does is regurgitate an old, stale, pattern. In some sense, it prevents you from finding new experiences, keeping society frozen in time, repeating the behavior sequences of those before them, the pioneers and trailblazers that define the relationships early. That would be true if the catalog of material to watch/listen/read remained static. But it does not. Nobody 10 years ago who was into music theory/practice would have seen Rick Beato's videos, or 12 Tone's. And things are different because those channels exist (and will presumably be different in another N years because of a different set of people producing new material).
- basch 4y ago
  The article is about more than youtube. The algorithms that balance the stock market, everyones 401ks, that predict repeat offenders in the criminal system. Stability, the kind that these systems attempt to create, is an equilibrium of unchanging nothingness. Change by definition is unstable.

by basch 4y ago

hultee 4y ago

Great article! Thanks

411111111111111 4y ago

> So what it really does is regurgitate an old, stale, pattern. In some sense, it prevents you from finding new experiences, keeping society frozen in time, repeating the behavior sequences of those before them, the pioneers and trailblazers that define the relationships early. The part about keeping society frozen in time is contradictory to the rest of the text. It's leading people on to the extreme end, so a conspiracy theorist will become even more of one etc. A frozen society would be unchanging... But it does change as extreme ideas spread like never before.

ericd 4y ago
Right, the brain seems to have a heuristic that if it hears/sees/etc the same thing, it makes it believe it more. Like if you’ve heard two different people spout the same wrong thing, you’re quite likely to start believing it. So if you’re fed the same thing over and over due to your YouTube persona bucket, you probably become a more devout believer, for better or worse. Receiving a smattering of different opinions probably keeps you in a better place in terms of remaining critical. Maybe staying in a skeptical frame of mind helps inoculate against this somewhat, because you go through the exercise of trying to find counter evidence at the same time, so that you’re essentially feeding your own brain conflicting messages. But that takes effort unless you’re already in the habit. Something to keep in mind, regardless of how correct you think your habitual info channels are. If dissent is stamped out, like it is on many subreddits and Twitter, that’s a pretty bad sign.
- switchbak 4y ago
  That's a good point - we have to be confronted with opinions we don't agree with such that we maintain our mental muscles for reasoning about why some ideas are wrong/bad. Otherwise if we're only fed a stream of things we agree with, that can be used to smuggle in bad/wrong ideas without our knowing it or having much ability to confront it. Not to mention that every once in a while you're confronted with some challenging ideas that compel a change in worldview in a positive way!

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

> So what it really does is regurgitate an old, stale, pattern. In some sense, it prevents you from finding new experiences, keeping society frozen in time, repeating the behavior sequences of those before them, the pioneers and trailblazers that define the relationships early. That would be true if the catalog of material to watch/listen/read remained static. But it does not. Nobody 10 years ago who was into music theory/practice would have seen Rick Beato's videos, or 12 Tone's. And things are different because those channels exist (and will presumably be different in another N years because of a different set of people producing new material).

basch 4y ago
The article is about more than youtube. The algorithms that balance the stock market, everyones 401ks, that predict repeat offenders in the criminal system. Stability, the kind that these systems attempt to create, is an equilibrium of unchanging nothingness. Change by definition is unstable.