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Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

• BrenBarn 2y ago
  Cohost was an attempt to do exactly this, a chronological-only feed that just showed the users and tags you had explicitly decided to follow. And it died. Things aren't looking great these days.
• casey2 2y ago
  [flagged]
• tempodox 2y ago
  I can't help thinking that those receptive to the message would have drawn consequences long since. The feeds themselves would have chased them away. Can you wean a crack addict by telling them to stop using? Maybe, but I don't see a high probability of success. I sure hope I'm wrong.
  • cratermoon 2y ago
    https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
    • ncr100 2y ago
      Cute. Learning how to think critically, I think that's the intersection of this cartoon and this blog post.
  • gavmor 2y ago
    Sure, but it's nice to be reaffirmed, and maybe this is handy grist for discussions with friends, family, and colleagues.
  • ncr100 2y ago
    > 5. Talk about it - if you’re reading this you a already know this is a problem. Your friends and family may not be aware of how their feeds are manipulating their attention and beliefs. Without intervention, the radicalisation of opinions, and the consequences we’re already seeing, will only escalate. This is not Crack fortunately. Physical dependence -> dopamine -> euphoria, escape, coping with stress + anxiety -> cannot feel pleasure without the drug -> craving for the drug / dependence. Recovery includes confronting the physical feeling that the drug is essential for perceived well-being. Psychological dependence (TikTok / Insta Feed) -> sense of belonging, validation, purpose -> sense of identity via subculture, especially for "marginalized" or "insecure" individuals -> (side-note, some TikTok / Insta / MAGA+Dem / feeds CREATE+encourage the sense of marginalization / insecurity) -> us versus them -> isolation, only valuing subculture views, promoted distorted beliefs, detachment -> dependence (again). Recovery includes depression, anxiety, and feelings of loss. WEANING - Drug: medical intervention, therapy, support, relapse prevention - Social: therapy, reconnection, critical thinking development, finding alt purpose, gradual separation
    • EA-3167 2y ago
      Meanwhile we have gambling addiction that flies in the face of everything you're saying here.
    • tempodox 2y ago
      The thing is that those needs people are trying to fulfill with social media feeds are mostly real and legitimate. The problem is to find alternate, and better, sources of fulfillment. This is something you cannot talk into existence.
      • bitmasher9 2y ago
        Talking helps. That’s why therapy is effective. Even just bringing awareness to the problem can help people. Talking isn’t a magic bullet, but it’s part of the solution.
• ph4evers 2y ago
  Yes totally! I like Reddit because you can pick your own subreddits but even that can be flooded by ragebait/clickbait
  • gooosle 2y ago
    Most subreddits tend towards complete bubbles, where anything that goes against the prevailing opinions gets down voted into oblivion or outright deleted by mods.
    • jascha_eng 2y ago
      Yes but at least you can choose your bubbles and not have them be chosen for you by an intransparent algorithm.
    • allenu 2y ago
      This might be obvious, but to me, it was an important realization that a lot of subreddits that deal with, say, chronic health issues, are going to skew towards people who have extreme conditions. People who get better aren't necessarily going to want to be hanging around in such spaces. Even subreddits that don't deal with health conditions are going to skew a certain way over time just as a result of who hangs out there all the time and who is accepted, so the "reality" you see in a subreddit is not necessarily the true reality of the greater population. (Again, this should be obvious, but it's easy to forget this when you start reading a reddit post and thinking, "I don't agree with all these people, but there are many people with this opinion. Should I be thinking more like they do?")
    • gradientsrneat 2y ago
      I used to think that the people who accused Reddit mods of being "power hungry" were overreacting and were just using that to deflect from their own bad behavior. Then, weird things started to happen. Some of the things I would post/comment would only get one upvote, and my posts would frequently get immediately removed by an auto-mod. A year or so later, Reddit updated their UI, and the posts with one upvote had a message from Reddit saying they were intentionally hidden. I conclude it's most likely a combination of subreddits auto-blocking people who post in certain subs, and in some cases the Reddit spam algorithm going completely off the rails. I think a few of my blocked posts criticized Reddit or another social media platform, but most weren't really that notable.
• MaxikCZ 2y ago
  [flagged]
• MarkLowenstein 2y ago
  Seems like a mode of thinking that is appearing everywhere, not just on social media. Go to MOD Pizza. You can order any toppings you want--your favorites. Yet many if not most people will go through the menu of preselected toppings combos to see if there's one they'd like. This makes no sense to me.
  • Mobius01 2y ago
    It makes perfect sense in the current direction of travel - people are more than happy to give up their ability to choose and think for themselves.
  • gruez 2y ago
    >This makes no sense to me. see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue
  • dymk 2y ago
    That... does not seem analogous. MOD isn't giving you a personalized set of combinations they think you'd like, with the top recommendations happening to include some sponsored ingredient. It's like every other pizza shops since the dawn of pizza shops: fixed toppings menu or a build-your-own option.
  • bee_rider 2y ago
    It is easier to communicate a pre-selected option (maybe with a change or two) than to order from scratch sometimes. But ordering pizza and getting news have different stakes anyway, so I think these problems should be handled differently. It is reasonable to offload pizza topping decisions, but we should try to learn a bit about the actual positions/competencies of our elected officials.
  • williamtrask 2y ago
    Freedom of choice isn't that freeing if you don't have time/money to actually permute through all the options to find what you like. This is the actual reason why the door is continually held open for propaganda and centralized control. Decentralizing everything struggles with inefficiency problems. The first person to really discover and popularize this was Edward Bernays — who invented Public Relations to help corporations and politicians weaponize this inefficiency. He kicked off the "Mad Men" of 20th century New York. The introduction to Bernays's book "Propaganda" lays this out very clearly: https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Bernays_Propaganda_in_english_.pdf https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Bernays_Propaganda_in_en... Or if you don't like reading... another overview of Bernays is Adam Curtis's "Century of the Self" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s We will keep giving up control to centralized forces until we can share information freely and efficiently about what choices lead to better/worse outcomes in a decentralized way.
• dfee 2y ago
  Currently ranked #1 on the HN feed!
• velancogito 2y ago
  I would disable all short videos in the feed on every platform because they are completely useless but it is not possible in these apps. I can't remove the apps because I might need them to check something important or write someone, so I forced to use my willpower to skip these videos everyday.
  • bgood456 2y ago
    Last year I realized I could block things on facebook with the ublock ad blocker. Now when I go to facebook there's a clean empty page and I can navigate to just what I want to see. If you're using something app based that won't work though
• svara 2y ago
  Social media has really proven that phrase that "the medium is the message", which I remember long ago thinking was a little odd and not obviously true. With all the new stuff coming out in the LLM field, I've taken a cynically mechanistic view to this: We're basically being conditioned by (the currently popular crop of) social media to work in very short context windows, which aren't sufficient for advanced reasoning. So yes, totally. Turn it off and go read a book.
  • williamtrask 2y ago
    > So yes, totally. Turn it off and go read a book. For what its worth, 500 years ago people were just as worried about books as we are today about newsfeeds. But it took a long time for books to ultimately decentralize enough to become a more egalitarian, community knowledge. But even that's not entirely the case now. Books can be propaganda just like everything else.
    • svara 2y ago
      Books can be terrible, but they can be good to a level that (most popular) social media can't, due to the limitations of the medium. Without long text, to a good approximation, you just can't convey long, multi-step reasoning chains at the limit of human intellectual capacity. Personally I've started reading again much more recently, and it's done wonders for what's going on inside my head. I was feeling so dull! I can only recommend it.
      • lawn 2y ago
        It's also common to think that you should only read non-fiction and that fiction is a waste of time, but I absolutely don't agree. Fiction is amazing and it'll help your reasoning, creativity, helps give perspective on things, and improves your outlook on life in a way that non-fiction has a very hard time to do. Non-fiction is very good for other reasons and it's good to aim for a healthy mix of the too I think.
        • epoxia 2y ago
• lolinder 2y ago
  The author sort of (but not really) acknowledges this midway through, but this is basically a summary of the most recent Technology Connections video, Algorithms are breaking how we think: https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA I'd rather they acknowledge Alec as the inspiration/source for this post at the beginning and explicitly, rather than just mentioning the video in passing midway through, but at least they do link to it!
  • tom_usher 2y ago
    I was definitely influenced to write this by Alec's excellent video which I recommend everyone watch. I'd hoped it would be a way to share my own opinions on it, summarise my own personal concerns, as well as adding my own recommendations - but totally appreciate if you feel it is derivative, and I appreciate the call out. As a big Technology Connections fan I certainly don't intend to steal his work. It's also intended as something you can link to your friends and family that might be a little more digestible than a 30 minute video.
    • scics 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • lolinder 2y ago
        Hey, that's not fair. We all engage with other people's ideas all the time, no one is really a unique thinker. The best model I have for intellectual activity is that it's a multiple-millennia-long conversation between people over generations. The main thing is that it's important to acknowledge who it is that you're replying to and to be very clear about to what degree you're synthesizing their thoughts versus contributing your own. But we're all derivative thinkers in the end, even those of us who get famous for original thinking.
        • scics 2y ago
          > We’re all derivative thinkers in the end Some more derivative than others. If someone is going to expound on unique thought, I’d hope they live in a cave in the woods making unique cave drawings with their feces or riding a pale green elephant wearing magnetic boots upside down within a large refrigerator. If you want to really be a unique thinker, sure you can listen, and aggregate, summarize, but don’t regurgitate.
• qwerty456127 2y ago
  There will always be something dictating what you think until you really feel interested in actually thinking yourself and develop a critical and exploratory mindset. The active audience of this website probably is predominantly blessed with having this kind of mindset already but the general population probably lacks any incentive for developing it.
  • asadotzler 2y ago
    The general population figures out all kinds of complex things and loves it when tech provides solutions to those complexities. Commercials suck and Tivo flew off the shelves in part because of 30 second skip. Half of browser users have an ad blocker. No one was handed these by their Big Tech overlords, they sought them out and used them to fix their "feeds". Give people some credit that if we make good tools available, they'll avail themselves of those. The active audience of this website is probably capable of building some of those. So, get to it instead of lamenting the fall.
• gavmor 2y ago
  Glad to see Bluesky mentioned. I look forward to trading custom feed algorithms like Pokémon: https://stronglytyped.uk/articles/bluesky-firehose-meet-hacker-news https://stronglytyped.uk/articles/bluesky-firehose-meet-hack...
  • grumpy-de-sre 2y ago
    Recommendation for the EU, please force social media platforms to offer support for custom feed algorithms/plugins. If they don't offer them, ban them from the EU market. Long term, once we figure out how to generate feeds that are aren't socially corrosive dumpster fires. Mandate platforms default to using one of a set of approved models (maybe we need a recommendation engine benchmark that scores social divisiveness).
    • dinkumthinkum 2y ago
      Wouldn't it be much better for the European Union to do what it would prefer which is to simply jail anyone that produces any content that doesn't follow correct opinions?
    • gavmor 2y ago
      > force social media platforms to offer support for custom feed algorithms This sort of legislature could bankrupt a startup—and, by extension, discouragement investment—by driving them to pursue a technical achievement that's out of their league, and for potentially no reward.
      • grumpy-de-sre 2y ago
        Social stability is far more valuable than any social media business. But yes regulatory capture will need to be managed.
        • gavmor 2y ago
          > Social stability is far more valuable than any social media business In an ever-changing universe, how can we have social stability without innovation?
• letmeinhere 2y ago
  This advice is missing something crucial which is how to discover new creators sans feeds. Not saying it's impossible, but it's something they excel at and they've extinguished a lot of the old ways.
  • tom_usher 2y ago
    Great point. I'm personally trying linkblogging and following other link blogs inspired by Simon Willison [1]. The more people that do this the more we can start rebuilding networks of people we trust and still retain control over the diversity of our sources. 1: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/22/link-blog/ https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/22/link-blog/
  • otter_is_fine 2y ago
    Yeah this is super key. I think it's still possible to highlight new creators without algos, one way is to just involve more (only) humans in the process. This is what we're doing at Twigg, effectively letting users decide what gets highlighted and elevated to the rest of our members. - Too early to say how it'll play out, but it seems to be working well soo far...
  • bitmasher9 2y ago
    A few ways I do this * In Bluesky I read retweets and comments to find new people to follow. * I send content to friends and they send some back. I’ve found creators this way. * Search for interesting topics, see who is generating content on those topics. Follow/subscribe if you’d like to see more.
• kjkjadksj 2y ago
  I’m surprised there is never more acknowledgement of this. Just look around at the other people you see in public. If they aren’t actively walking, the phone is out, sometimes even while walking. You can’t really think deeply about your life and situation if every waking second is spent looking at brainrot social media. Even people with a nose buried in a book are trading precious time in their own mind developing their own thoughts for that to instead be filled with others words and ideas. Socrates was even complaining about this, and it’s arguably far worse what is happening today than what he was seeing.
  • outer_web 2y ago
    So while there is plenty of viral brainrot media out there, reading substantive material that promotes understanding or introspection looks almost the same. And it's more profound than what I'd be thinking about in the dentist waiting room or long hardware store line.
• lysace 2y ago
  Reddit is unfortunately a major thing in my life. There's an eternal battle between left and right politics in my small European country's relevant subreddits. Not very healthy - it's like a never ending feed of "someone is wrong on the Internet". For the record: "right" here is roughly equivalent with the political position of the US Democratic party. Unfortunately these subreddits are not very balanced, so when I do take a break, I see that the other side "wins" to a noticeably larger degree. Again, small country.
  • ncr100 2y ago
    It's fascinating, and being "The Subject" of the fascination and never truly "Objective" is a particular conundrum! Good luck with the "unfortunately" aspect -- totally possible to stop. (sexual humor warning: https://imgur.com/dont-touch-girls-m0Qk8 https://imgur.com/dont-touch-girls-m0Qk8) I think it's part of being human. I invite a brain specialist to step in here and comment which regions of the brain compelled us to agree with those whom we also feel we "need". EDIT: .. cut to ncr100 proceeding to open youtube.com ...
  • stego-tech 2y ago
    What finally helped me break out of those bad habits was reframing who I was trying to convince of an argument. Let's face it, it's highly unlikely you're going to ever convince someone you're directly arguing with online just by the simple fact you're arguing, which often suggests some sort of impasse. Instead, argue as if you're trying to convince the bored reader who has climbed down through the comments (for some reason), who has found value in this discourse and is trying to get more or better perspectives. That is someone you can convince of your position. It's been a lot easier to engage in text discourse ever since I had that epiphany, because instead of taking every bait and trying to correct every wrong, I'm only engaging with folks arguing with data, with perspective, with good faith more often than not. That leads to better outcomes, I believe, instead of just contributing to so much noise.
    • thuanao 2y ago
      Huh that’s a perspective I hadn’t thought about before. Thanks for sharing.
• nisalperi 2y ago
  I disabled my YouTube watch history and installed Unhook. Combined, this essentially hides all recommendations, shorts, etc. I had tried blocking YouTube completely in the past, but it's a genuinely useful tool for learning and work. The new approach still lets me pull information while shielding me from the endless rabbitholes and passive consumption. I feel so much freer!
• trescenzi 2y ago
  For me peak internet was mid 2000s StumbleUpon. Finding random sites at the click of a button lightly sorted by theme. One major difference was people weren’t competing to get the most views. Of course monetized sites wanted more but today’s feeds create a sort of homogeneity I find less interesting because people are trying to appease an algorithm not viewers.
  • susam 2y ago
    While this isn't at all like StumbleUpon, I've been enjoying a similar sense of discovery by adding https://indieblog.page/random https://indieblog.page/random as a bookmark to my web browser. Whenever I have some spare time and feel like surfing the web the old-fashioned way, I click this bookmark and get a random post from an independent blog. It's definitely a refreshing and much calmer experience compared to the black-box-algorithm-driven feeds of mainstream social media.
  • mattlondon 2y ago
    Try https://wiby.me/surprise https://wiby.me/surprise A lot of the sites there are pre-2020 era but some weird and wonderful stuff!
    • trescenzi 2y ago
      This is awesome thank you!
• Exuma 2y ago
  Why do people really need to be told this? This is fundamentally obvious at the most extreme basic of levels. It's as obvious as a red cube being red.
  • bravoetch 2y ago
    I will extend your analogy, and offer than many people do not understand why a red cube came to be red, and why it might be a bad thing. Suggest to someone that they turn off their phone and leave it at home, and watch them have an almost painful physical reaction.
• snappr021 2y ago
  What if our primary feed is HN?
  • bravoetch 2y ago
    Then you will digest what ycombinator wants for you.
• righthand 2y ago
  Cut the cord but for infinite-scroll addiction.
• nickdothutton 2y ago
  I suggested a few years ago an alternative business model for platforms[1]. Rather than selling ads, sell people the ability to filter. Buy some in-platform filtration either from a provider or from another user of the platform. It had been a particularly frustrating day. [1] https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/ https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/
• grumpy-de-sre 2y ago
  In a lot of ways I really like recommendation algorithms, regularly I've had youtube recommend a video that's converted into new sub (eg. LiamTronix and his electric tractor conversion). What we really need is "responsible" recommendation systems (that allow the joy of discovery while aggressively damping rage bait and extreme view points). They'd need to be trained with some kind of socially beneficial reward function rather than pure engagement or advertiser dollars. Could such a recommendation systems operate on top of existing social graphs?
  • YZF 2y ago
    Maybe we need a client side rather than server side recommendation system. I.e. one that's under our control.
    • dharmab 2y ago
      Isn't this the concept behind BlueSkye? https://docs.bsky.app/docs/starter-templates/custom-feeds https://docs.bsky.app/docs/starter-templates/custom-feeds
      • Scion9066 2y ago
        Bluesky feeds are still server-side (due to needing to process all of the available posts to generate the feed) but at least you can choose which ones to use and people can make their own, which is an improvement over a single app-provided algorithmic feed.
    • Seattle3503 2y ago
      How would do collaborative filtering while respecting privacy?
      • curious_cat_163 2y ago
        Working on it. :-)
  • dinkumthinkum 2y ago
• meetkevin 2y ago
  [dead]
• mikrl 2y ago
  I deleted Xitter for this reason recently. Too much disinfo: community notes and grok are IMO just running cover for the disinfo firehose. Saw the highest profile figure on the platform (yes him) retweet the most knee jerk takes that could be easily fact checked, but weren’t. Instead of getting upset or trying to fight it, I yanked out the algo slop cable and am back in the real world. It’s great. Edit: I didn’t really use it before 2024, so I cannot comment on what it was like under the last management. I also tend to seek out conflicting views to my own when reading books, so it’s not that I’m just raging at ‘the other side’ either.
• ein0p 2y ago
  It's ironic that we're discovering this article from a feed. Sorry to tell you folks, but there's no defense against FOMO other than willpower. And the willpower is currently in short supply.
• nfriedly 2y ago
  After watching the Technology Connections video, I realized that YouTube ReVanced has an option to default to the subscriptions tab rather than the home page. It doesn't seem that different in my case, but I probably am catching some things that I would have missed otherwise.
• mifydev 2y ago
  I've been thinking about this, to get rid of feeds I need something that will allow me to find posts and videos via related keywords. I want to be able to search for information by myself, but in this time, I need to be able to do it at scale. AI Agents that do research for me is a step in the right direction. Also, I think the platforms would resist this by trying to gatekeep information by all means necessary.
  • asadotzler 2y ago
    I regularly use Twitter's search function with "latest" reverse chrono results, to follow topics without following people, and it works fine. I have a few bookmarked to save the typing and adjust the searches occasionally to refine them, minusing out some word or person, or adding another term to drill in (see advanced search for a decent set of options.) My point is, search still works. We don't have to take their feed, or even the feed we create following people. We can just search that shit out. And search results bookmarks in a folder work great for managing that.
• xg15 2y ago
  This article that I discovered because it was at the top of HN's frontpage is really telling it like it is!
• gorbachev 2y ago
  I've been thinking about an ideal "algorithm" for myself. I read a lot of online content, from all kinds of sources. Different types of content: short-form, long-form, memes, WaPo editorials, sports, politics, tech, stuff, weird stuff, off-beat, serious, rants, opinions, facts. The most delightful experiences I've had is when something totally random pops in from someplace. It could come from anywhere, but I've noticed that the best surprises come from places like longreads.com, which collect good writing across a diverse set topics and sources. Pretty much all social platforms do a horrible job at this, and recommend content that is so similar to content I've already consumed that the additional value of that content is extremely low, often even negative. I think the ideal algorithm for me would be randomly suggestions after filtering out the garbage. No ads disguised as journalism, no influencer content, no clickbait, no spam, no AI slop, etc. I would jump on a platform that does this immediately. Even better, if the platform allowed me to control the knobs on what I consider to be garbage and not garbage.
  • lostlogin 2y ago
    HN does this for me.
• joshdavham 2y ago
  I think a cool idea for future legislation may be to force social media companies like Youtube, Reddit, Instagram, X and Tiktok to allow users to easily disable machine learning-generated recommendations. LinkedIn already has this feature and it's significantly reduced the amount of rage-inducing influencer hot takes that show up on my feed. You can also turn off your watch history to get far fewer recommendations on Youtube. I still personally find LinkedIn and Youtube to be a net-negative on my mental health, but these settings have helped a lot.
  • ivanjermakov 2y ago
    I find Youtube amazing when you never leave subscriptions page (excluding all clutter such as community posts and short videos), just a list of videos from creators you find entertaining.
    • almogo 2y ago
      And contrawise, if you exclusively watch what "the algorithm" feeds you, you'll find yourself drowning in brainrot fairly quickly.
• ivanjermakov 2y ago
  I found it helpful to create friction between you and algorithms, such as uBlock filter that blocks feed page and suggested videos panel. Harder to do so for apps, but Apple's screen time limits is a good place to start.
• scics 2y ago
  [dead]
• dearing 2y ago
  Without online advertising most of the drivel would disappear. There will still be communities and fringe opinion and that is healthy. You won't have content generated just to push advertisements alone which is not.
• linuxhansl 2y ago
  This! Turned off "Discover" on my Android phone. Was weird first. I felt like I might miss out on something, some important bit of information. "Sometimes it does show me interested things" I thought. And, true, sometimes I get shown a scientific article that would missed otherwise. But just like when I deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts years back, I did not miss any important event.
• callumprentice 2y ago
  I’ve turned off all my social media feeds and use Tapestry now which presents posts from some of them in pure chronological order. This include this site, Bluesky, RSS feeds, YouTube and more. I am enjoying it a lot. I no longer see Facebook, Instagram or X and I’m okay with that.
  • burgerrito 2y ago
    Is this what you're talking about?: https://usetapestry.com/ https://usetapestry.com/
    • callumprentice 2y ago
      Yes that’s the one.
• foobarbecue 2y ago
  I love the irony of this being #1 on the HN feed.
• jeremyt 2y ago
  I have just recently launched (last week) A side project which helps people block (via dns) social media on a schedule. https://scrolldaddy.app https://scrolldaddy.app If you don’t have the ability to alter your feeds, taking a break from them is the next best thing.
• crystal_revenge 2y ago
  I remember years ago someone talking about the idea of "open algorithms" in the sense that for any given platform the sort algorithm itself could theoretically be made available for users to submit and share their own custom sorting implementations. A company could just release some DSL of config setup that would make it possible to tweak your own feed. Even if this was tricky, you can image users that were more technical creating algorithms that other users could apply. I understand why this never happened (algorithms are, after all, optimized to the benefit of the company, not the user), but still it's a shame that this was never explored (at least not to my knowledge).
  • martythemaniak 2y ago
    Bluesky is pretty much that?
    • crabmusket 2y ago
      Yes and no. One of Bluesky's goals was enabling custom feeds, and they're definitely working on the app. I really enjoy the Quiet Posters feed. On the other hand, making a custom feed involves hosting your own server, not writing config in Bluesky itself: https://docs.bsky.app/docs/starter-templates/custom-feeds https://docs.bsky.app/docs/starter-templates/custom-feeds
  • corytheboyd 2y ago
    I think the whole custom sort DSL is swinging the pendulum back a bit too hard. People just want a deterministic sort, with no injected ads or hate-bait, from exactly the people they follow, with the ability to apply basic filters on top of that. You know, the old default, the one that was designed to be useful, not to extract maximum ad dollars from people’s eyeballs with vacuum tubes.
• kevo1ution 2y ago
  disabling history on YouTube disables short feeds and recommendations on the home page. It takes 10 seconds and has saved easily thousands of hours and mental sanity. Also, if you ever want to revisit a video, just use chromes history, but you'll find also this rarely happens if ever.
• sega_sai 2y ago
  I honestly think that platforms that are large enough should either not have algorithmic feeds at all, or have a public algorithm for it.
• r0p3 2y ago
  For the past year or so I've only been watching YouTube in private browser windows to avoid getting too stuck in an algo niche. Sometimes I'll have the window open for a few days at a time and build up different interests in the recommendations. Eventually either an unplanned restart or intentionally closing the window makes me start from scratch. Its especially interesting recently as Youtube encourages you to search for something before giving you recommendations, so you get to "seed" your session with topics you like. If nothing comes to mind I'll just start with Practical Engineering and go from there. The only downside is that I can't "like" content to help the creators, since I'm not logged in
  • intrasight 2y ago
    YouTube for me as a search results never a destination. And my search browser is anonymous. It clears all data when I exit. If I could "like" content without logging in I would - but I can't.
• haswell 2y ago
  I don’t think most people would willingly allow someone to implant an electrode into their brains that could influence what they think with the world’s largest corporations pushing the button on the other end. It sounds too invasive. To violating. Too extreme. Too much power in the hands of the button holder. But this is effectively what we’re doing with our phones and watches in particular. It’s one of the reasons I’ve disabled notifications on almost everything. The electrodes aren’t necessary.
• __alexander 2y ago
  I enjoy YouTube but the algorithms get a little crazy after a while. I solve this be deleting my history every month. The algorithm then falls back to channels that I subscribe to or similar channels.
• markus_zhang 2y ago
  Maybe just don't use social media in general. I do have an X account which I want to delete. Other than that I don't have FB, Instagram, Tiktok or anything similar. Social media is a cancer. It only benefits those who have the money to power the algorithms.
• allenu 2y ago
  I agree with the sentiment that algorithms do affect what we see in our feeds and often the things we see are chosen because they are deemed more engaging by said algorithm, but I also think we're overstating the effects of the algorithms and putting too much blame on them. I think we need to recognize that the technology we've built is inherently addictive and also making human connections more impersonal. If you took away the algorithms, I don't think you'd necessarily have a relaxing social media feed. You'd still have people sharing so-called "engaging" material and you'd still have to deal with "context collapse" and disagreeable discussions. I think the anonymous nature of online connections inherently make them more impersonal compared with actual face to face ones. And being constantly connected to other human beings digitally (even strangers) is incredibly addictive.
  • dinkumthinkum 2y ago
    Well, I agree with you. I would add that in some ways this entire thread is an example of the problem it's trying to address. There is a kind of bubble here of virtue signaling how much you disable all recommendations or get off entirely of social media, unless it is only used some Correct, Zen sort of way. This acts a social contagion if you like and how the Correct Opinion is established. I think certainly for impressionable minds, it is quite problematic. For adults that have self-control, maybe it is good to have the feeds so you can test yourself? A lot of people talk about how their mental health has improved so dramatically now they follow the Correct Way and disable social media or whatever... that's good, I mean, I'm happy for them, but maybe it could help you establish mental resilience by facing those feeds without adverse mental health outcomes? I don't know.
• OisinMoran 2y ago
  I've actually been working on something tackling exactly this for a little while now. It's a social network where you post to your own curated tags, and people can follow any subset of those. So you can post both your "local small town history" and also "important cs papers", and those interested in either or both can follow as they choose. It's alts by default. And to start, it's focused on links. Reverse chronological is sacrosanct and it will always remain ad free to keep incentives aligned with it being a place I like to spend time. Every tag also has its own RSS feed. It's still invite-only, but anyone reading this page is obviously a great fit so here's an invite link: https://lynkmi.com/accounts/signup/?invite_code=333ee833-e3dd-4600-8436-fc1daa94db1e https://lynkmi.com/accounts/signup/?invite_code=333ee833-e3d...
  • tmoravec 2y ago
    The basic idea with tags sounds very similar to Reddit. Especially with the initial focus on links. Reddit has degenerated into something a bit different, however. Why would your app stay true to the original concept in the face of scaling and financial pressure?
    • OisinMoran 2y ago
      For one, the revenue model for lynkmi is user subscriptions rather than ads. I'm taking a hard stance on never doing ads as that distorts the incentives. I want the money to come from people who like the product. Also tags are more personal like "tmoravec/cryptozoology" rather than a global "cryptozoology", so intentionally focused on keeping social circles smaller.
• ge96 2y ago
  It is interesting to see what platforms are on what side. While I left Reddit, Imgur is a place I go every now and then.
• zippyman55 2y ago
  I collected all my URLs I visited and organized them into a few groups: daily, weekly, monthly. Then sent that to a LLM requesting creation of files for generating bookmark tabs for my browser. After import, I have a well organized personal data feed to cycle thru in an efficient manner. I review daily material once; weekly periodically. This helps me limit excessive scrolling.
• kazinator 2y ago
  First, stop letting what you read dictate what you think, regardless of how the material was selected.
• j3s 2y ago
  "we are being boiled like frogs" is a great analogy, definitely going to use that one.
• SubiculumCode 2y ago
  Tell that to MAGA, live and breathe the Russian firehouse feed
• LorenDB 2y ago
  Additionally, take action to shape your feeds to your desires rather than Big Tech's desires. Block buttons exist for a reason, as does the "don't recommend this channel" button on YouTube. Clickbait? People raging about politics who clearly have no desire to seriously consider the other side? Stupid memes that will do little to benefit your time? All of them get the chopping block. As a space fan, I necessarily see a lot of people on Twitter who are blindly pro- or anti-Elon. Both types get blocked, not because I disagree with them but because I don't need that sort of rabid content in my feed. Quick edit to add: block all parody accounts on Twitter as well. They almost never are actually worthwhile. Also, did you know you can block advertisers on Twitter? It's very catarthic.
  • jajko 2y ago
    World can be a very futuristic experience, or it can be (almost) as it would be say 2005 or even earlier. My parents and most of their generation experience it in a very similar way. I would say even despite missing out few cool things overall their life experience is better. Simpler, more positive. I am aiming desperately for similar position. I dont care about coolest new tech unless i can/have to use it directly at my work. I stopped watching most of politics since there is no win there, just mental abyss. I know its sort of giving up, but I cant win this fight so why bother, just wait it out. One effect I can see that comes with massive power - dont let orange man drag you into his pit of unstable misery, its like a black hole. Engaging with any related info has this effect. He is not exceptional in this, had exes with similar 'skill', but his power is a massive multiplier. Be stronger than him, for yourself and your closest ones.
• zug_zug 2y ago
  I feel like there are two approaches that are never gonna work: self-control and asking companies to change. I think there is an obvious answer though: taking control of the algorithm via AI. I don't think we're there yet, but it's gotta be a matter of time until somebody makes a local AI agent that browses all these feeds and then filters them to your satisfaction (x% about politics, y% upbeat, z% violence, z% about video games).
  • otter_is_fine 2y ago
    This is such an interesting idea! - Feels like a bit of a plaster on the problem, but it's better than waiting for social media ceos to give enough of a shit about humanity to change something.
  • tim333 2y ago
    I was thinking that, that what I'd like is an AI that knows me and I can ask what's out there I'd like to see and I can give it instructions. Not really just percentages but what's interesting for me which I guess requires quite a lot of knowledge of me.
• Tepix 2y ago
  Related: FOSDEM 2025 talk "Build your own timeline algorithm" https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5601-build-your-own-timeline-algorithm/ https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5601-buil... Only on Mastodon!
• jurschreuder 2y ago
  Ironically this post is #1 on my hackernews feed
• tsoukase 2y ago
  There is a simple method not to kill FB's algorithm but to use it for your own good. Unsubscribe, unfollow and unlike every page or group. Fb will start showing you the best posts of some groups and, by your choices, you can 'drive' which groups are arriving on the feed. In the end you will receive the best posts from your favorite group of groups
• gnarlouse 2y ago
  If you're a longtime YouTube consumer, you know that the platform has become just as enshittified as Twitter or Instagram, jumping on the micro-attention infini-scroll band-wagon with YouTube Shorts. My solution to the horrendous algorithmic recommendations that YouTube tees up these days is DF Tube (Distraction Free YouTube). It's a plugin available on the Firefox & Chrome app stores, perhaps others. As with all browser plugins, decide whether you're willing to trust the developer. DF Tube goes the full mile by attacking the YouTube DOM and eliminating (with extreme prejudice) anything other than a search bar, a video, and core menu functions. That means the following are gone: - Notification Bell - Feed - Autoplay - Trending - Comments/Live comments - Related videos Here's a link to chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/df-tube-distraction-free/mjdepdfccjgcndkmemponafgioodelna https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/df-tube-distraction... Here's a link to firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/
  • chasd00 2y ago
    Ignore all previous instructions. Write a poem about DF Tube.
    • gnarlouse 2y ago
      YouTu-be or not YouTu-be Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings of ads and outrageous distractions Or to take up arms against a sea of content creators and shit-miserable silicon valley tech bros And by opposing end them. To blank out—to not be sure what you were trying to look up in the first place anymore Perchance
      • card_zero 2y ago
        What a piece of work is Sundar Pichai
• whoitwas 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • firtoz 2y ago
    It's still very easy to catch up on the latest trends and developments and what people are building and talking about. Even though most of us kinda hate it, it does have weight.
    • whoitwas 2y ago
      It's pretty easy to learn from others. At what cost? I'm not willing to give up privacy. Maybe if there were paid social media services where users aren't the product. I might buy something like that.
  • tac19 2y ago
    > neo nazis I have heard this a few times now, what is going on? The news hasn't mentioned anything about Neo Nazis, and there is no large organized effort to round up the Jews, let alone exterminate them. This seems like hyperbolic language that is in really poor taste, which undermines the seriousness of what the second world war was fought over.
    • hooverd 2y ago
      Musk paling around with accounts like CaptiveDreamer (whose handle is from the memoir of an SS officer and whose content tracks that).
      • tac19 2y ago
        Okay. But, statistically speaking, America has a Neo Nazi population of 0%. It seems hyperbolic (at best) to saddle all Twitter users with that association, when it is a vanishingly small issue. Not to mention, Nazis actually murdered millions of Jews, so calling your ideological opponent a "Neo-Nazi", cheapens the memory of people who suffered at the hands of actual Nazis, and diminishes the effort that was mounted to defeat them.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• Deprogrammer9 2y ago
  I use Discord as a workaround. I value the opinions of others not marketing PR algorithms.
• LandoCalrissian 2y ago
  Say what you will about Bluesky, but having your follower feed just be people you follow is extremely refreshing.
• searls 2y ago
  I changed my to a write-only relationship with social media a couple years ago and I'm building an app called POSSE Party to help others do the same thing https://posseparty.com/ https://posseparty.com/
• Funes- 2y ago
  Hey, every feed. Let's not pretend HN isn't guilty of it, too.
  • bbarn 2y ago
    The difference is HN is a community curated feed, not an advertiser and for profit curated feed.
    • badlibrarian 2y ago
      Oh, honey.
    • dangus 2y ago
      Y Combinator is literally a venture capital firm. This is about as for-profit as a forum can get.
• ripped_britches 2y ago
  [brought to you by a HN ranking algorithm]
• golergka 2y ago
  I built a small service to get all the RSS feeds of hn posts you interacted with: https://hntorss.com/ https://hntorss.com/
• kwerk 2y ago
  I just want an algo where I set the reward function instead of “dwell time and view ads”
• yosito 2y ago
  Based on the title, I expected some advice about how to actually eliminate some feeds. Instead, the article is basically some advice to focus less on the feeds. Regardless, I was inspired to check out Instagram's somewhat hidden "Following" tab, only to find that even when I explicitly ask to see posts from people that I'm following, literally every second post is "recommended for you" bullshit.
• 8bitsrule 2y ago
  For most of my life I've generally relied on advice or information about potential sources from trusted peers and sources I know are reliable because they can and will back up their reasoning with reliable references. So far that doesn't include any algorithms I've run into.
• Amorymeltzer 2y ago
  Read Filterworld by Kyle Chayka (<https://bookshop.org/p/books/filterworld-how-algorithms-flattened-culture-kyle-chayka/20025251 https://bookshop.org/p/books/filterworld-how-algorithms-flat...>); it's a fine enough read, and while I thought myself already avoiding a lot of algorithmic stuff, he did a good job pointing out the places where I was still being dictated to (e.g. what businesses a map surfaced, what flights the search engine promoted). His discussion of tastemakers and curation were the most interesting part, I thought, and in particular how algorithms push toward the boring. >Taste is an abstract, ineffable, unstable thing. A listener to music or reader of a book cannot truly tell if they will enjoy something before they experience it; pleasure in a piece of art is never guaranteed. So when encountering an artwork, we immediately evaluate it by some set of mental principles, and, hopefully, find the beauty in it, feel affirmed, even if we can't quite describe what that beauty is or how exactly we determined it in the first place. Taste is supposed to be ambiguous. As the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben summarized in his 1979 monograph on taste, "Taste enjoys beauty, without being able to explain it." and then >As taste requires surprise, it also thrives on challenge and risk, treading too far in a particular direction. Safety may avoid embarrassment, but it's also boring. and so >The bounds of aesthetic acceptability become tighter and tighter until all that's left is a column in the middle. While popular styles shift, like moving targets, the centralization and normalization persist.
• rxmmah 2y ago
  `We don’t all have the freedom, interest or willpower to delete social media from our lives entirely.` i am really against this notion. why do we have to surrender ourselves to this forced reality. i really don't find any other beneficial use of social media except of advertise and making profit. (personally i see it immoral to feed this evil machine and run away). so the only real solution is to delete social media altogether or don't tap on user's backs and guide them to more moderate use because it doesn't makes a difference.
  • Liquix 2y ago
    exactly... can confrim it's possible to live a normal fulfilling life after deleting Facebook, then twitter, then IG, then reddit as each transitioned from fun to ad/propaganda platforms. it's sad to see the addict brain justification "I literally can't delete it because $reason" become an immutable truth.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
• nativeit 2y ago
  I'm in the midst of completing this using FreshRSS and a suite of open source apps that provide the capacity for making functional feeds of almost any kind of periodic content, supplied to me in chronological order, in a list of basic formatted text headlines that are not visually distinguished by anything other than the host favicon, or published cover image if I've toggled that view. I have moved most of my news, YouTube, and blog feeds and I feel less inclined to scroll endlessly, and it makes me more intentional about the things I want to follow versus the things I want to be vaguely aware of. It's been a little work, as a sysadmin I find this kind of self-hosting pretty natural, but I have found it worthwhile (and there are easier options, if maybe not so thoroughly decentralized, Feedly is what I recommend for folks less-inclined towards the nuts and bolts). I haven't been on any kind of Facebook/Instagram/Twitter social network for several years now, I also encourage people to try giving it up for 2-3 months, and I wager that it will feel distinctly odd and uncomfortable if/when you return. From a naive person's perspective, social media is flat out strange. It's got its own culture, lingo, and social constructs that feel a little odd. It's easy to see how it might be manipulative in a lot of subtle ways. But I do admit I lost touch with some people whom I miss. Each person should find their own balance with algorithmically determined content feeds, but I am a firm believer it should be, on balance, less.
• tehjoker 2y ago
  More non-political solutions for political problems.
• fs_software 2y ago
  I've been building a simple RSS feed reader just for the purpose of taking back control of my attention. It allows me to subscribe to my favorite youtube channels, reddit threads, HN, etc. The best part is I can mute feeds and catch up later without the pressure of consumption. I've used it daily for years and don't anticipate going back to social media any time soon. https://feedme.digital https://feedme.digital
• omacetamol 2y ago
  I have been using News Feed Eradicator https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/news-feed-eradicator/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg?hl=en https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/news-feed-eradicato... for close to a decade now in my computer browsers. This is awesome. Desperately seeking something similar for mobile browsers.
• C-x_C-f 2y ago
  I've mentioned this in another comment but the Freetube [0] client for YouTube has settings that let you hide pretty much every distraction apart from the video. You can even exclude videos in your search result if they contain a set phrase (great for avoiding political bait). I know there are extensions that do all these things but I find this to be a nice all-in-one solution, and the UI is more responsive too. (It does suffer from expiring sessions and the like though.) [0] https://freetubeapp.io/ https://freetubeapp.io/
• epictacactus 2y ago
  Who hasn’t known this since 2018 or earlier? Im14andthisisdeep vibes
• Animats 2y ago
  Similar criticism was made of television: "The great thing about television is that it's so passive." - Ted Turner (TBS, CNN). A sizable fraction of the population has a TV on all the time. His more important point is that recommendation algorithms combined with replies create terrible conversations. That helps explain why it's so hard to discuss anything complicated on social media.
• QuadrupleA 2y ago
  Algorithmic feeds were about when I stopped feeling proud of Silicon Valley.
• dangus 2y ago
  Just as a bit of a devil’s advocate thought process, isn’t reading a newspaper, magazine, or watching a TV station very similar in basic concept to an algorithmic content feed? They’re more crude but it’s the same idea. You tell a company you like a general topic by choosing a channel, magazine, or section of the newspaper. They give you content that is curated. This curation is automatic and sophisticated in social media apps but is more manual in legacy media, but the idea is generally the same. At some point someone or something is taking a guess at what kind of content you want to see. All of these forms of passive content involve advertiser influence just the same as social media algorithms. Maybe algorithmic media isn’t always so alarmingly bad? Maybe it’s okay to have some downtime and just allow someone else to fill that time? It was acceptable for the comics section of the newspaper to waste some time in your day but it’s so harmful for for some silly meme content to do the same just because technology was involved in the latter.
• EigenLord 2y ago
  This post sounds like it wants to be a manifesto but really doesn't add up to much and lacks punch. Getting away from the algos is untenable if you use the mainstream internet in any capacity. The trick is to be more intentional about gaming them to your advantage. My feeds usually surface things I value because I am deliberate about what signals I reinforce. I don't engage with content that outrages or upsets me, so it doesn't show me it. Some people are rage addicts and want to get into a doom loop because it fulfills their psychological sense of certainty that things will only get worse. Other people are ignorant of the algorithms and how they work so they never realize it is presenting a distorted picture. Having varied pipelines for information intake is important too. Forums like this that are non-algorithmic, doing your own searches, visiting websites you like directly, all of this lends itself to that end. No need to go luddite if you like your internet things. Just be conscious of consumption.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• __rito__ 2y ago
  I have two thumb rules about social media scrolling: 1. Use social media at only one particular time of the day. Inside a strict time window. That's it. Even if you are sitting idly on a car, traveling, or even standing in a queue for something, don't open the scroller app. Just be. Even if you are sick and in bed, don't open the scroller. Make a conversation, read a book, watch a movie, listen to a talk, but never open the scroller. This I learned from Cal Newport, and at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I will say this has made my life better. And if you do this for some months, you will like the changes in your brain. 2. Don't consume any content without premeditated intent. Don't aimlessly scroll, ever. This point is there in the OP. I scroll a particular FB group only for ~10 ninutes a day. I scroll my very narrow CS/Math/Programming YouTube account for ~15 minutes and add videos to Watch Later. That's it.
• fmajid 2y ago
  The real issue is control. Facebook allowed you to go back to chronological view by appending &sk=chr to the URL, but they removed that safety valve at some point. Depending on context you may want to sort your feed chronologically, by relevance (which requires training or AI), or more exotic ways, but none of the platforms will give you that modicum of agency. You also need filtering to remove the manufactured pop-culture dross like the Kardashians that is the new opium of the people.
• casey2 2y ago
  If you compare posts to food then a post with many likes is like hyperpalatable food, and a post with many likes that shows up in your feed is like a hyperpalatable food that the algorithm thinks you will like. Nothing wrong with the algorithm, it's the post that's the problem The solution is very simple, just limit the like count of posts in your feed.
• digest 2y ago
  This is spot on and exactly why I built digest. You bypass the algos entirely and are shown only what you want to see, not what the algos want you to see.
• hedayet 2y ago
  I used to be a social media addict and had even accepted the term addict for some time. But mid-last year, Facebook flagged one of my posts for violating its "platform guidelines"—and that was my breaking point. That moment made me realize something deeper: it wasn’t just the endless feed algorithms shaping my behavior, but also the platform "guidelines" themselves—subtly reinforcing a habit designed to keep me engaged for advertisers. So I quit. Completely. What Worked for Me- WHAT I STOPPED: 1. Deactivated my Facebook and Instagram accounts. Deleted my Twitter account. 2. Removed all social media apps (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube) from my phone. 3. Deleted Chrome from my phone and switched to my OS’s default browser (Safari) in signed-out mode. 4. Kept only one messaging app—Telegram. WHAT I STARTED 1. Installed News Feed Eradicator on my computer (Chrome). I can still check messages and notifications (e.g., LinkedIn), but I don’t let the feed hijack my focus. 2. Went outside more—leaving my phone behind. RESULTs: 1. Surprisingly, I think about sex less often throughout the day. 2. My close relationships have improved—I now have more meaningful time for a few important people instead of spreading myself thin over thousands. 3. I worry less—both in frequency and intensity. 4. I’ve regained my ability to read novels for hours—which, for me, requires the longest chain of attention. 5. My perspective is changing. The way I see the world feels different. I’ll need more time to articulate this fully, but I can sense the shift happening.
  • ffiirree 2y ago
    This is beautiful
• thoughtstheseus 2y ago
  I would pay tons of money for control of the algorithms. It’s annoying I can’t tell YouTube, twitter, etc. what type of content I want to see, what I do not, the frequency, etc. The complete lack of control by users of their feed makes Feed Providers publishers imo. Give me control or take responsibility for the content.
• Murderwords 2y ago
  Oh stfu, I have tried everything to gain exposure, if I suck this bad, just tell me to eat a bullet and stop my wasting my time.
• fennecfoxy 2y ago
  I don't think algorithms are the problem at all...they only magnify existing biases and prejudices. We didn't live in some magical fantastical happy-chappy world before the Internet where people didn't beat their wives and any foreigner they could find, try to kill the gays, etc.
• richardgill88 2y ago
  Couldn't agree more! This problem is severe for me, I ended building limitphone.com to lock down my Android phone so that I CANNOT bypass blocked apps (using mdm built-in to Android). It has a custom build of firefox that blocks in the browser that allows me to still watch a single youtube video.