5 ms·

Americans Are Trapped in an Algorithmic Cage

29 points by _____k 2y ago

9283409232 2y ago
People want things to be easy. I feel like there is a startup opportunity here to manage peoples connections to more federated services. Give them an easy 1 place to log into Bluesky, Mastodon, Pixelfed, etc if you want me to get off of Twitter and Instagram.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Noooooo. No. Just no. Money poisons. There is nothing. Especially not an opportunity. Just no. No. Please stop. Nope.
  - 9283409232 2y ago
    I get what you're saying here. 100% but I don't see anything jumping to do it otherwise.
- omgwtfbyobbq 2y ago
  Or more broadly, syndication as a service. The user picks what service or services they want their hub/s to be, and the startup handles auth/accounts/publishing/etc with whatever other services they want to broadcast to.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
EA-3167 2y ago
I've never had a Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Myspace whatevertheF account and I've never felt like I was missing out. Social media can be great, if by social media you mean: something like IRC/Discord, or something ultra-simplistic like HN. Anything else and you're making a bad trade. People keep trying to find a way to have their cake and eat it too, despite decades of clearly seeing that you can't. I'm starting to become very tired of this victim-mentality that demands the convenience of highly centralized, moderated, and connected algorithmic social media, but ALSO want it to be run the way they think it should be. You want out of the "cage"? Log off.
- apothegm 2y ago
  Most people don’t know they’re in the cage. Most of the rest don’t know how to keep in touch with their friends without it. Or worse, they’re literally addicted to it because it’s deliberately designed to administer a steady trickle of dopamine.
- mindslight 2y ago
  The whole point of the article is that significant numbers of other people being in the memetic cage will affect you, regardless of whether you yourself see through it.
spzb 2y ago
https://archive.is/JEG4u https://archive.is/JEG4u
exceptione 2y ago
The article details the problems succinctly, and then finishes with a question about behavior. We as HN audience have the tendency to think about technical solutions to societal problems. Partly because that is what we are good at, partly because we have difficulty seeing the greater picture. We feel powerless as tech-ability is not a real currency in real life, like social skills. And so nihilism creeps in. Instead of grasping to technological changes, ask yourself what basic limits should serve as guard rail for the application of tech. If social media are a net loss to mental health, if they pump around unprecedented amounts of fake information, if they replace real, livid interactions with real and diverse people, if they destroy the fabric of society and thus increase misery, if they fill your living years with fake emotions, all those things just to give some more advertisement dollars to some nihilists that are bored to death will all that money and now want to own all of you, will you still say: ah, I cannot do anything about it? My 2ct: present the bill to the oligarchs. A public space is property of the public, not some billionaires. Outlaw all the negatives consequences. You will keep some fora for wood working enthusiast, some communities for hardware tinkerers, some sites about knitting, the good old internet. That's it.
- atmavatar 2y ago
  A simple first step is to remove section 230 protections from any platform that utilizes algorithmic filtering. Allowing users to do their own filtering is pretty hands-off, and basic moderation is necessary for most online platforms to function, but providing tailor-made echo chambers for each user goes way too far into curation to reasonably claim the platform bears no responsibility for its content.
  - 9283409232 2y ago
    This isn't going to have the affect you think it. Between bots spreading propaganda and users addicted to ragebait, it's just going to make people angrier thus increasing engagement which is what companies want.
imiric 2y ago
This article makes it sound like private companies are the ones doing the manipulation. That's not the problem. The problem is that anyone in the world with enough interest and very little resources can influence the thoughts and actions of large groups of people. Adtech has built these tools to manipulate people into opening their wallets, yet the same tools can be used for much sinister purposes. Everything from propaganda to election interference to destabilizing a nation from the inside out. It's pretty evident that the sociopolitical instability we've been seeing for more than a decade now in not just the US, but many western countries, is in large part the product of domestic and foreign operations carried out to fulfil some agenda. Social media companies are not in control. They're in the data market business because the business is boomin', and they can't (nor won't) control who uses their tools because it would be bad for business. The only way any of this might improve is with government regulations. But considering that governments are in symbiosis with Big Tech, which is nowhere clearer than in the US now, and that at this point the public considers these services essential, judging only by the pushback against banning an app built by a political adversary, the chance any regulations will hit Big Tech is slim to none. America is doomed, but they shit their bed and now must lie in it.
- trod1234 2y ago
  You make several mistakes in your reasoning. First, these are not private companies for the same reason that there is not a real market in which these people operate. They receive preferential loans of debt issuance without reserve, from a money printer. They are propped up by the state who controls money printing, and thus are state actors, and left to a logical end would result in a collapse to non-market socialism before annihilation. They are performing manipulation wholesale in ways that inevitably break cognition, segmenting people into two groups, and this most certainly is a very real problem. The apathetic non-responsive, and induced psychosis and insanity are inherently chaotic. Given sufficient exposure to psychological stress, only these two groups remain, and rational thought it lost, this is well established. Government regulation with captive regulators, simply doesn't work, so you are correct only insofar as that there is a symbiosis, but its not stable. > America is doomed, but they shit their bed and now must lie in it This is demoralized self-hate. There are things people can do. There are still patriots that embody the same values as the founding fathers. While many of the systems are broken, even if it were to all break, those people would still exist and their actions would carry more weight than the falsehoods promoted today. They could easily rebuild following those principles without the dead weight. America exists in the hearts and values of its 'true' citizens. There are those who believe they are American citizens, and born here, but they were taught and raised under false ideology from a young vulnerable age, and continue maladaptive behavior moving forward. They were not taught founding principles based in rationalism in any meaningful way, some were taught but most weren't. There exist structural defects in the actions and circumstances now that are being taken, that intelligent and rational people can take advantage of if they so chose, but it would accelerate the decline of the failure of society rapidly, causing it to fail under its own weight. When society fails, it falls back to the natural laws, which in the context of the social contract are violence and destruction, not something to look forward to for the unprepared. When society fails, importantly so does the means to organize production, and with that the dependencies needed for the vast majority of people to feed themselves fail. A fallback to last century farming technology would mean half the global population dies, and this will eventually happen through no action taken by any party because of these structural defects, and a brittle dependency tree. In a word, America does have hope so long as its people retain their values, which are based most heavily in objective rationalism. The important part for people today is that they do not become so insane as to engage in MAD doctrine when the efforts which were known to be intractable and fail result in such failures. If someone were to push a button, and destroy everything not because of an existential threat, but because there is no path forward because doomed practices lead to doomed outcomes. That's the threat we all must face, the people willing to hold everyone hostage who are unable themselves to adapt. The if I can't have it no one can, childish, delusional, and insane mentality, that psychological stress (and torture) bring to people unknowingly. The future is far from certain. Claiming its doomed is either that of an adversary, or a demoralized individual in great need of help and support. The future is not going to be a nice one for our children, and many parasites will likely not survive, which is why its important to learn what you need to be useful to others in common cause. As for the state actors engaging in these activities. In positive feedback situations, business can win so much that they lose everything. It has happened before, and it will happen again, until people learn and take appropriate action.
daft_pink 2y ago
I pretty much watch youtube and hacker news. That’s about it.

29 points by _____k 2y ago

People want things to be easy. I feel like there is a startup opportunity here to manage peoples connections to more federated services. Give them an easy 1 place to log into Bluesky, Mastodon, Pixelfed, etc if you want me to get off of Twitter and Instagram.

rightbyte 2y ago
Noooooo. No. Just no. Money poisons. There is nothing. Especially not an opportunity. Just no. No. Please stop. Nope.
- 9283409232 2y ago
  I get what you're saying here. 100% but I don't see anything jumping to do it otherwise.
omgwtfbyobbq 2y ago
Or more broadly, syndication as a service. The user picks what service or services they want their hub/s to be, and the startup handles auth/accounts/publishing/etc with whatever other services they want to broadcast to.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

EA-3167 2y ago

I've never had a Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Myspace whatevertheF account and I've never felt like I was missing out. Social media can be great, if by social media you mean: something like IRC/Discord, or something ultra-simplistic like HN. Anything else and you're making a bad trade. People keep trying to find a way to have their cake and eat it too, despite decades of clearly seeing that you can't. I'm starting to become very tired of this victim-mentality that demands the convenience of highly centralized, moderated, and connected algorithmic social media, but ALSO want it to be run the way they think it should be. You want out of the "cage"? Log off.

apothegm 2y ago
Most people don’t know they’re in the cage. Most of the rest don’t know how to keep in touch with their friends without it. Or worse, they’re literally addicted to it because it’s deliberately designed to administer a steady trickle of dopamine.
mindslight 2y ago
The whole point of the article is that significant numbers of other people being in the memetic cage will affect you, regardless of whether you yourself see through it.

spzb 2y ago

https://archive.is/JEG4u https://archive.is/JEG4u

exceptione 2y ago

The article details the problems succinctly, and then finishes with a question about behavior. We as HN audience have the tendency to think about technical solutions to societal problems. Partly because that is what we are good at, partly because we have difficulty seeing the greater picture. We feel powerless as tech-ability is not a real currency in real life, like social skills. And so nihilism creeps in. Instead of grasping to technological changes, ask yourself what basic limits should serve as guard rail for the application of tech. If social media are a net loss to mental health, if they pump around unprecedented amounts of fake information, if they replace real, livid interactions with real and diverse people, if they destroy the fabric of society and thus increase misery, if they fill your living years with fake emotions, all those things just to give some more advertisement dollars to some nihilists that are bored to death will all that money and now want to own all of you, will you still say: ah, I cannot do anything about it? My 2ct: present the bill to the oligarchs. A public space is property of the public, not some billionaires. Outlaw all the negatives consequences. You will keep some fora for wood working enthusiast, some communities for hardware tinkerers, some sites about knitting, the good old internet. That's it.

atmavatar 2y ago
A simple first step is to remove section 230 protections from any platform that utilizes algorithmic filtering. Allowing users to do their own filtering is pretty hands-off, and basic moderation is necessary for most online platforms to function, but providing tailor-made echo chambers for each user goes way too far into curation to reasonably claim the platform bears no responsibility for its content.
- 9283409232 2y ago
  This isn't going to have the affect you think it. Between bots spreading propaganda and users addicted to ragebait, it's just going to make people angrier thus increasing engagement which is what companies want.

imiric 2y ago

This article makes it sound like private companies are the ones doing the manipulation. That's not the problem. The problem is that anyone in the world with enough interest and very little resources can influence the thoughts and actions of large groups of people. Adtech has built these tools to manipulate people into opening their wallets, yet the same tools can be used for much sinister purposes. Everything from propaganda to election interference to destabilizing a nation from the inside out. It's pretty evident that the sociopolitical instability we've been seeing for more than a decade now in not just the US, but many western countries, is in large part the product of domestic and foreign operations carried out to fulfil some agenda. Social media companies are not in control. They're in the data market business because the business is boomin', and they can't (nor won't) control who uses their tools because it would be bad for business. The only way any of this might improve is with government regulations. But considering that governments are in symbiosis with Big Tech, which is nowhere clearer than in the US now, and that at this point the public considers these services essential, judging only by the pushback against banning an app built by a political adversary, the chance any regulations will hit Big Tech is slim to none. America is doomed, but they shit their bed and now must lie in it.

trod1234 2y ago
You make several mistakes in your reasoning. First, these are not private companies for the same reason that there is not a real market in which these people operate. They receive preferential loans of debt issuance without reserve, from a money printer. They are propped up by the state who controls money printing, and thus are state actors, and left to a logical end would result in a collapse to non-market socialism before annihilation. They are performing manipulation wholesale in ways that inevitably break cognition, segmenting people into two groups, and this most certainly is a very real problem. The apathetic non-responsive, and induced psychosis and insanity are inherently chaotic. Given sufficient exposure to psychological stress, only these two groups remain, and rational thought it lost, this is well established. Government regulation with captive regulators, simply doesn't work, so you are correct only insofar as that there is a symbiosis, but its not stable. > America is doomed, but they shit their bed and now must lie in it This is demoralized self-hate. There are things people can do. There are still patriots that embody the same values as the founding fathers. While many of the systems are broken, even if it were to all break, those people would still exist and their actions would carry more weight than the falsehoods promoted today. They could easily rebuild following those principles without the dead weight. America exists in the hearts and values of its 'true' citizens. There are those who believe they are American citizens, and born here, but they were taught and raised under false ideology from a young vulnerable age, and continue maladaptive behavior moving forward. They were not taught founding principles based in rationalism in any meaningful way, some were taught but most weren't. There exist structural defects in the actions and circumstances now that are being taken, that intelligent and rational people can take advantage of if they so chose, but it would accelerate the decline of the failure of society rapidly, causing it to fail under its own weight. When society fails, it falls back to the natural laws, which in the context of the social contract are violence and destruction, not something to look forward to for the unprepared. When society fails, importantly so does the means to organize production, and with that the dependencies needed for the vast majority of people to feed themselves fail. A fallback to last century farming technology would mean half the global population dies, and this will eventually happen through no action taken by any party because of these structural defects, and a brittle dependency tree. In a word, America does have hope so long as its people retain their values, which are based most heavily in objective rationalism. The important part for people today is that they do not become so insane as to engage in MAD doctrine when the efforts which were known to be intractable and fail result in such failures. If someone were to push a button, and destroy everything not because of an existential threat, but because there is no path forward because doomed practices lead to doomed outcomes. That's the threat we all must face, the people willing to hold everyone hostage who are unable themselves to adapt. The if I can't have it no one can, childish, delusional, and insane mentality, that psychological stress (and torture) bring to people unknowingly. The future is far from certain. Claiming its doomed is either that of an adversary, or a demoralized individual in great need of help and support. The future is not going to be a nice one for our children, and many parasites will likely not survive, which is why its important to learn what you need to be useful to others in common cause. As for the state actors engaging in these activities. In positive feedback situations, business can win so much that they lose everything. It has happened before, and it will happen again, until people learn and take appropriate action.

daft_pink 2y ago

I pretty much watch youtube and hacker news. That’s about it.