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I feel like regardless of all else, the fact of algorithmic curation is going to be bad, especially when it's contaminated by corporate and/or political interes

I feel like regardless of all else, the fact of algorithmic curation is going to be bad, especially when it's contaminated by corporate and/or political interests. We have evolved to parse information as if its prevalence is controlled by how much people talk about it, how acceptable opinions are to voice, how others react to them. Algorithmic social media intrinsically destroy that. They change how information spreads, but not how we parse its spread. It's parasocial at best, and very possibly far worse at worst.

enaaem 1y ago
Social media should be liable for the content that their automatic curation put forward. If a telecom company actively gives your number to scammers to call you up, they should not hide behind the argument that it is not them scamming you, but someone else. Applying regular anti-fraud and defamation laws will probably put an end to algorithmic curation.
Lerc 1y ago
I have wondered if it's not algorithmic curation per-se that is the problem, but personalised algorithmic curation. When each person is receiving a personalised feed, there is a significant loss of common experience. You are not seeing what others are seeing and that creates a loss of a basis of communication. I have considered the possibility that the solution might be to enable many areas of curation but in each domain the thing people see is the same for everyone. In essence, subreddits. The problem then becomes the nature of the curators, subreddits show that human curators are also not ideal. Is there an opportunity for public algorithm curation. You subscribe to the algorithm itself and see the same thing as everyone else who subscribes sees. The curation is neutral (but will be subject to gaming, the fight against bad actors will be perpetual in all areas). I agree about the tendency for the prevalence of conversation to influence individuals, but I think it can be resisted. I don't think humans live their lives controlled by their base instincts, most learn to find a better way. It is part of why I do not like the idea of de-platforming. I found it quite instructional when Jon Stewart did an in-depth piece on trans issues. It made an extremely good argument, but it infuriated me to see a few days later so many people talking about how great it was because Jon agreed with them and he reaches so many people. They completely missed the point. The reason it was good is because it made a good case. This cynical "It's good if it reaches the conclusion we want and lots of people" is what is destroying us. Once you feel like it is not necessary to make your case, but just shout the loudest, you lose the ability to win over people who disagree because they don't like you shouting and you haven't made your case.
- Llamamoe 1y ago
  > the solution might be to enable many areas of curation but in each domain the thing people see is the same for everyone. Doesn't this already happen to some extent, with content being classified into advertiser-friendly bins and people's feeds being populated primarily by top content from within the bins the algorithm deems they have an interest in? > Once you feel like it is not necessary to make your case, but just shout the loudest, you lose the ability to win over people who disagree because they don't like you shouting and you haven't made your case. To some extent, this is how human communication always worked. I think the biggest problem is that the digital version of it is sufficiently different from the natural one, and sufficiently influenceable by popular and/or powerful actors, that it enables very pathological outcomes.
  - Lerc 1y ago
    >Doesn't this already happen to some extent, with content being classified into advertiser-friendly bins and people's feeds being populated primarily by top content from within the bins the algorithm deems they have an interest in? The distinction I think would be with publicly disclosable algorithms, you would at least know why you were receiving a particular thing and have the option to not subscribe to that particular algorithm. Ideally such things would be properly, open source. Once public, algorithms are subject to gaming. Open source provides the many eyes and feedback required to stay ahead of the bad actors.
armchairhacker 1y ago
No doubt the specific algorithms used by social media companies are bad. But what is "non-algorithmic" curation? Chronological order: promotes spam, which will be mostly paid actors. Manual curation by "high-quality, trusted" curators: who are they, and how will they find content? Curation by friends and locals: this is probably an improvement over what we have now, but it's still dominated by friends and locals who are more outspoken and charismatic; moreover, it's hard to maintain, because curious people will try going outside their community, especially those who are outcasts. EDIT: Also, studies have shown people focus more on negative (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias) and sensational (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salience_(neuroscience)#Salience_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salience_(neuroscience)#Salien...) things (and thus post/upvote/view them more), so an algorithm that doesn't explicitly push negativity and sensationalism may appear to.
- rightbyte 1y ago
  > Chronological order: promotes spam, which will be mostly paid actors. If users chose who to follow this is hardly a problem. Also classical forums dealt with spam just fine.
  - armchairhacker 1y ago
    How will users choose who to follow? This was a real problem when I tried Mastodon/Lemmy/Bluesky, I saw lots of chronological posts but none of them were interesting. Unfortunately, classical forums may have dealt with spam better because there were less people online back then. Classical forums that exist today have mitigations and/or are overrun with spam.
    - camgunz 1y ago
      What used to happen is there would be human-powered networks ("if you like me, check out X/Y/Z"), rather than algorithm-powered networks. Sadly, the existence and dominance of algorithm-powered networks has withered humans' networking muscle. We can probably build it back though.

enaaem 1y ago

Social media should be liable for the content that their automatic curation put forward. If a telecom company actively gives your number to scammers to call you up, they should not hide behind the argument that it is not them scamming you, but someone else. Applying regular anti-fraud and defamation laws will probably put an end to algorithmic curation.

Lerc 1y ago

I have wondered if it's not algorithmic curation per-se that is the problem, but personalised algorithmic curation. When each person is receiving a personalised feed, there is a significant loss of common experience. You are not seeing what others are seeing and that creates a loss of a basis of communication. I have considered the possibility that the solution might be to enable many areas of curation but in each domain the thing people see is the same for everyone. In essence, subreddits. The problem then becomes the nature of the curators, subreddits show that human curators are also not ideal. Is there an opportunity for public algorithm curation. You subscribe to the algorithm itself and see the same thing as everyone else who subscribes sees. The curation is neutral (but will be subject to gaming, the fight against bad actors will be perpetual in all areas). I agree about the tendency for the prevalence of conversation to influence individuals, but I think it can be resisted. I don't think humans live their lives controlled by their base instincts, most learn to find a better way. It is part of why I do not like the idea of de-platforming. I found it quite instructional when Jon Stewart did an in-depth piece on trans issues. It made an extremely good argument, but it infuriated me to see a few days later so many people talking about how great it was because Jon agreed with them and he reaches so many people. They completely missed the point. The reason it was good is because it made a good case. This cynical "It's good if it reaches the conclusion we want and lots of people" is what is destroying us. Once you feel like it is not necessary to make your case, but just shout the loudest, you lose the ability to win over people who disagree because they don't like you shouting and you haven't made your case.

Llamamoe 1y ago
> the solution might be to enable many areas of curation but in each domain the thing people see is the same for everyone. Doesn't this already happen to some extent, with content being classified into advertiser-friendly bins and people's feeds being populated primarily by top content from within the bins the algorithm deems they have an interest in? > Once you feel like it is not necessary to make your case, but just shout the loudest, you lose the ability to win over people who disagree because they don't like you shouting and you haven't made your case. To some extent, this is how human communication always worked. I think the biggest problem is that the digital version of it is sufficiently different from the natural one, and sufficiently influenceable by popular and/or powerful actors, that it enables very pathological outcomes.
- Lerc 1y ago
  >Doesn't this already happen to some extent, with content being classified into advertiser-friendly bins and people's feeds being populated primarily by top content from within the bins the algorithm deems they have an interest in? The distinction I think would be with publicly disclosable algorithms, you would at least know why you were receiving a particular thing and have the option to not subscribe to that particular algorithm. Ideally such things would be properly, open source. Once public, algorithms are subject to gaming. Open source provides the many eyes and feedback required to stay ahead of the bad actors.

armchairhacker 1y ago

No doubt the specific algorithms used by social media companies are bad. But what is "non-algorithmic" curation? Chronological order: promotes spam, which will be mostly paid actors. Manual curation by "high-quality, trusted" curators: who are they, and how will they find content? Curation by friends and locals: this is probably an improvement over what we have now, but it's still dominated by friends and locals who are more outspoken and charismatic; moreover, it's hard to maintain, because curious people will try going outside their community, especially those who are outcasts. EDIT: Also, studies have shown people focus more on negative (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias) and sensational (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salience_(neuroscience)#Salience_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salience_(neuroscience)#Salien...) things (and thus post/upvote/view them more), so an algorithm that doesn't explicitly push negativity and sensationalism may appear to.

rightbyte 1y ago
> Chronological order: promotes spam, which will be mostly paid actors. If users chose who to follow this is hardly a problem. Also classical forums dealt with spam just fine.
- armchairhacker 1y ago
  How will users choose who to follow? This was a real problem when I tried Mastodon/Lemmy/Bluesky, I saw lots of chronological posts but none of them were interesting. Unfortunately, classical forums may have dealt with spam better because there were less people online back then. Classical forums that exist today have mitigations and/or are overrun with spam.
  - camgunz 1y ago
    What used to happen is there would be human-powered networks ("if you like me, check out X/Y/Z"), rather than algorithm-powered networks. Sadly, the existence and dominance of algorithm-powered networks has withered humans' networking muscle. We can probably build it back though.