9 ms·

> disengagement. That disengagement metric is valuable, I'm not gonna give it away for free anymore. I'll engage and disengage randomly, so no one knows what w

> disengagement. That disengagement metric is valuable, I'm not gonna give it away for free anymore. I'll engage and disengage randomly, so no one knows what works. > The boom in digital detoxes, the dumbphone revival among young people That's a market now. It doesn't mean shit. It's a "lifestyle". > People are feeling the manipulation They don't. Even manipulation awareness is a market now. I'm sure there are YouTubers who thrive on it. --- How far can you game a profiling algorithm? Can you make it think something about you that you're not? How much can one break it? Those are the interesting questions.

notarobot123 1y ago
The Algorithm doesn't care if you're illegible. How ever much you mess with it, you're still its plaything.
- properclass 1y ago
  ineligible or illegible?
  - immibis 1y ago
    illegible. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State#Summary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State#Summary
- pdimitar 1y ago
  The algorithm still can't make me buy or read rage-bait. Of course the machine will never stop trying. But with results decreasing gradually with time, the human will get discouraged and will turn it off. It happens at places, btw.
- alganet 1y ago
  I'm not trying to shake it off.
jagrsw 1y ago
> I'll engage and disengage randomly, so no one knows what works. Any predictable pattern, including when you disengage, is just another feature for the pricing model. If the model learns you reliably leave after 3 hours, it will simply front-load the surge pricing into that initial window. Analysis: This user loses disengages during 75% of the time and belongs to a group of 5% who do the same. The expected revenue for this group over a longer period and with multiple users is 24% lower than for the average user. Action: Since 80% of theirs engagements last for at least 12 hours, ads should be shown and prices increased only within the first three hours. Hope this helps :)
- alamortsubite 1y ago
  At which point the user disengages from the platform permanently. Great work.
- _9ptr 1y ago
  He said randomly, which means the opposite of predictable or reliable. Sometimes he won't disengage for years and the algorithm would be non the wiser!
afiodorov 1y ago
There's nothing an algorithm can do against disciplined, intentional engagement. If you know which car you want to buy it doesn't matter what the salesman has to say.
- vntok 1y ago
  What car you want to buy is just one tiny part of the transaction. The salesman can and will manipulate you on everything else from price to warranty, from payment schedule to cross-sale rebates, from maintenance subscription to registration fees, from additional options to spare tires.
  - afiodorov 1y ago
    You're right, they can try to manipulate you on a thousand tiny things. My counter-argument is that at a certain point, it's not worth the mental energy to fight over what amounts to pennies on the dollar. Anecdotally, when I bought my car recently, they forgot to even offer me the extended warranty they'd planned to push. I find it funny to think it was so minor, even they forgot to care.
    - ctxc 1y ago
      Tangential, but I think most extended warranties I've noticed are beneficial. Even last month I was kicking myself for forgetting to extend a 2 year warranty which costs 1/4th the one time repair cost I had to cough up.
      - blincoln 1y ago
        Are you sure the extended warranty would have covered it? I paid for an extended warranty on the first car I ever bought. Turned out it didn't cover any of the things the salesperson cited as good reasons to pay for it, and to maintain the warranty, I'd have to pay the dealer for all maintenance - even oil changes. That car never needed any repairs, but seeing the list of exclusions convinced me to never pay for an extended warranty again.
      - 1y ago
__MatrixMan__ 1y ago
> How far can you game a profiling algorithm? I think pretty far. I expect the future involves nonsense layer full of AI slop being read and written by AI's. Mapping it onto the actual humans will be difficult unless you have a preexisting trust relationship with those humans such that they can decrypt the slop into your actual communications.
- alganet 1y ago
  I think it's more difficult than it seems. If I were an algorithm-profiling company I would try to anchor my profilings in the real world (what kinds of people I talk to, about what, what kinds of places I visit, what are the opinions of others on me, etc). LLM garbage would be just to draw voluntary participation in potential surveys. It takes a particularly paranoid and stubborn individual to make the necessary efforts to consider what kinds of profiling could be done with such anchored data, and even more effort to probe it enough to acquire some knowledge on how it works.
  - __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
    I agree that it's currently paranoid to hide your activities so that the algorithm profiling companies see you as several different people, or see the activities of millions as if they're just one... Automated misdirection on the part of the users is, so far, minimal. But the point of such a company is to sell data on individuals, and a problematic use case for such data is to kill the ones who say things that you don't like. As that becomes cheaper and easier to do I think we'll find that it's not so paranoid to hide.
    - alganet 1y ago
      Maybe the endgame is honesty. Not pretending you're several people, or other convoluted ways of misdirection and disguise. Just honestly acknowledge that profiling exists, and explicitly work against it. That should be enough to make any algorithm company that notices something is wrong to trip on its own wires, thinking some more elaborate form of hackery/covertion is being employed. The likelyhood of some company noticing a single user is quite low though, but if you are able to hook even a single person inside that company using nothing but honesty and no tricks, that is the best trick of all.
spacemadness 1y ago
Have you read anything by Mark Fisher? He spoke about capitalism absorbing all resistance which makes it almost impossible to ever escape from. Which is what you’re saying I think. Resistance becomes the next market and works through the same economic systems it’s attempting to resist.
- willturman 1y ago
  David Foster Wallace made a similar argument about Television being able to absorb, re-contextualize, and subsequently market any effort opposed to it as a cause of malignant addiction and abdication of societal responsibilities in his essay E. Unibus Pluram. Today you can probably substitute television for YouTube, TikTok, etc, but the argument still holds up, perhaps better than ever.
  - _9ptr 1y ago
    It's sad he can't witness the death of television
Levitating 1y ago
> The boom in digital detoxes, the dumbphone revival among young people >> That's a market now. It doesn't mean shit. It's a "lifestyle". The fact that there's such a market now, means something on it's own I believe. Regardless if it's a "lifestyle", it's a lifestyle people are choosing now. I know more and more people who either don't own a smartphone or have it on DnD at all times. It's the same for "manipulation awareness" or whatever. You can't will a market into existence, the market has to already exist because people are drawn to it. I am not saying that it will matter in the end, but I can say for a fact that there are people consciously disengaging from social media.
- alganet 1y ago
  > there are people consciously disengaging from social media There are people _voluntarily_ disengaging. It is different. We're talking about manipulation, you have to consider the possibility of unconscious decisions.
AnimalMuppet 1y ago
> Those are the interesting questions. Not to me. I don't want to manipulate the manipulators. I just want to not be manipulated. I want to be able to go through my day without having to fight off manipulation in order to do and be what I want to do and be. The goal is my freedom, not to "stick it to the man" in some way that won't actually matter to them.

notarobot123 1y ago

The Algorithm doesn't care if you're illegible. How ever much you mess with it, you're still its plaything.

properclass 1y ago
ineligible or illegible?
- immibis 1y ago
  illegible. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State#Summary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State#Summary
pdimitar 1y ago
The algorithm still can't make me buy or read rage-bait. Of course the machine will never stop trying. But with results decreasing gradually with time, the human will get discouraged and will turn it off. It happens at places, btw.
alganet 1y ago
I'm not trying to shake it off.

jagrsw 1y ago

> I'll engage and disengage randomly, so no one knows what works. Any predictable pattern, including when you disengage, is just another feature for the pricing model. If the model learns you reliably leave after 3 hours, it will simply front-load the surge pricing into that initial window. Analysis: This user loses disengages during 75% of the time and belongs to a group of 5% who do the same. The expected revenue for this group over a longer period and with multiple users is 24% lower than for the average user. Action: Since 80% of theirs engagements last for at least 12 hours, ads should be shown and prices increased only within the first three hours. Hope this helps :)

alamortsubite 1y ago
At which point the user disengages from the platform permanently. Great work.
_9ptr 1y ago
He said randomly, which means the opposite of predictable or reliable. Sometimes he won't disengage for years and the algorithm would be non the wiser!

afiodorov 1y ago

There's nothing an algorithm can do against disciplined, intentional engagement. If you know which car you want to buy it doesn't matter what the salesman has to say.

vntok 1y ago
What car you want to buy is just one tiny part of the transaction. The salesman can and will manipulate you on everything else from price to warranty, from payment schedule to cross-sale rebates, from maintenance subscription to registration fees, from additional options to spare tires.
- afiodorov 1y ago
  You're right, they can try to manipulate you on a thousand tiny things. My counter-argument is that at a certain point, it's not worth the mental energy to fight over what amounts to pennies on the dollar. Anecdotally, when I bought my car recently, they forgot to even offer me the extended warranty they'd planned to push. I find it funny to think it was so minor, even they forgot to care.
  - ctxc 1y ago
    Tangential, but I think most extended warranties I've noticed are beneficial. Even last month I was kicking myself for forgetting to extend a 2 year warranty which costs 1/4th the one time repair cost I had to cough up.
    - blincoln 1y ago
      Are you sure the extended warranty would have covered it? I paid for an extended warranty on the first car I ever bought. Turned out it didn't cover any of the things the salesperson cited as good reasons to pay for it, and to maintain the warranty, I'd have to pay the dealer for all maintenance - even oil changes. That car never needed any repairs, but seeing the list of exclusions convinced me to never pay for an extended warranty again.
    - 1y ago

__MatrixMan__ 1y ago

> How far can you game a profiling algorithm? I think pretty far. I expect the future involves nonsense layer full of AI slop being read and written by AI's. Mapping it onto the actual humans will be difficult unless you have a preexisting trust relationship with those humans such that they can decrypt the slop into your actual communications.

alganet 1y ago
I think it's more difficult than it seems. If I were an algorithm-profiling company I would try to anchor my profilings in the real world (what kinds of people I talk to, about what, what kinds of places I visit, what are the opinions of others on me, etc). LLM garbage would be just to draw voluntary participation in potential surveys. It takes a particularly paranoid and stubborn individual to make the necessary efforts to consider what kinds of profiling could be done with such anchored data, and even more effort to probe it enough to acquire some knowledge on how it works.
- __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
  I agree that it's currently paranoid to hide your activities so that the algorithm profiling companies see you as several different people, or see the activities of millions as if they're just one... Automated misdirection on the part of the users is, so far, minimal. But the point of such a company is to sell data on individuals, and a problematic use case for such data is to kill the ones who say things that you don't like. As that becomes cheaper and easier to do I think we'll find that it's not so paranoid to hide.
  - alganet 1y ago
    Maybe the endgame is honesty. Not pretending you're several people, or other convoluted ways of misdirection and disguise. Just honestly acknowledge that profiling exists, and explicitly work against it. That should be enough to make any algorithm company that notices something is wrong to trip on its own wires, thinking some more elaborate form of hackery/covertion is being employed. The likelyhood of some company noticing a single user is quite low though, but if you are able to hook even a single person inside that company using nothing but honesty and no tricks, that is the best trick of all.

spacemadness 1y ago

Have you read anything by Mark Fisher? He spoke about capitalism absorbing all resistance which makes it almost impossible to ever escape from. Which is what you’re saying I think. Resistance becomes the next market and works through the same economic systems it’s attempting to resist.

willturman 1y ago
David Foster Wallace made a similar argument about Television being able to absorb, re-contextualize, and subsequently market any effort opposed to it as a cause of malignant addiction and abdication of societal responsibilities in his essay E. Unibus Pluram. Today you can probably substitute television for YouTube, TikTok, etc, but the argument still holds up, perhaps better than ever.
- _9ptr 1y ago
  It's sad he can't witness the death of television

Levitating 1y ago

> The boom in digital detoxes, the dumbphone revival among young people >> That's a market now. It doesn't mean shit. It's a "lifestyle". The fact that there's such a market now, means something on it's own I believe. Regardless if it's a "lifestyle", it's a lifestyle people are choosing now. I know more and more people who either don't own a smartphone or have it on DnD at all times. It's the same for "manipulation awareness" or whatever. You can't will a market into existence, the market has to already exist because people are drawn to it. I am not saying that it will matter in the end, but I can say for a fact that there are people consciously disengaging from social media.

alganet 1y ago
> there are people consciously disengaging from social media There are people _voluntarily_ disengaging. It is different. We're talking about manipulation, you have to consider the possibility of unconscious decisions.

AnimalMuppet 1y ago

> Those are the interesting questions. Not to me. I don't want to manipulate the manipulators. I just want to not be manipulated. I want to be able to go through my day without having to fight off manipulation in order to do and be what I want to do and be. The goal is my freedom, not to "stick it to the man" in some way that won't actually matter to them.