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> Are they, or instead they will help keeping you in your comfort cage? I’ve been paying close attention to what YouTube shorts/tiktok do. They don’t just show
by janalsncm 1y ago
> Are they, or instead they will help keeping you in your comfort cage?
I’ve been paying close attention to what YouTube shorts/tiktok do. They don’t just show you the same genre or topic or even set of topics. They are constantly in an explore-exploit pattern. Constantly trying to figure out the next thing that’ll keep your attention, show you a bunch of that content, then on to the next thing. Each interest cluster builds towards a peak then tapers off.
So it’s not like if you see baking videos it’ll keep you in that comfort zone forever.
- nottorp 1y agoBut you're describing the engagement cage, while I'm just pointing that you need to be careful not to escape from it just to get trapped inside the comfort cage.
- Karrot_Kream 1y agoIs there a rigorous definition of "engagement cage" or is the term just HN-tuned engagement bait? (: Fundamentally content discovery is always an explore-exploit loop. What you tune the loop with is what makes it useful for any given purpose.
- nottorp 1y ago> Fundamentally content discovery is always an explore-exploit loop Is it? Or only when you do it for profit?
- Karrot_Kream 1y agoHuh? "Explore" means to show the user new content. "Exploit" is to show more of the same content. You can say the HN algorithm does both as well: the front page shows a variety of topics allowing you to explore but the upvotes "exploit" shared interest by bumping it higher in page rankings.