4 ms·

My opinion, anything driven by an algorithm is inherently bad. It’s hard giving up those sites, not because that’s where the people are but because we are all

My opinion, anything driven by an algorithm is inherently bad. It’s hard giving up those sites, not because that’s where the people are but because we are all addicted to them. If you switch to mastodon or pixelfed, you’ll find good stuff there, but you won’t engage with it as much because it’s not algo driven, which to me is a win.

voncheese 27d ago
> My opinion, anything driven by an algorithm is inherently bad. I really like this simple statement. It gets to the heart of what is bad about social media (at least to me). Its one thing if a site has the same content that I have to actually go and crawl through myself to find things that interest me, its another when the site thinks it knows what I want/like and guides me. The former forces me to engage my brain and explicitly engage with content (good or bad) the latter enables my brain to implicitly engage with content (good or bad). Thank you for the statement!
acutesoftware 27d ago
That is good, but it should be qualified a little. If the algorithm simply says "sort by most recent", then it is pretty good. It is the profit driven algorithms that are doing the damage.
biophysboy 27d ago
yes, the fundamental BS assumption of algorithmic social media is that human desire and curiosity is legible, and can be calculated in a straightforward way.
6510 27d ago
ATM the killer product would be a "bring your own algo" message board/socio thing/infinite scroll endorphin generator/etc I run a simple badword filter on my rss aggregator and it already outperforms anything big tech can come up with by a very large margin. Back when advertisements weren't 40 minute long I one time fell asleep while watching youtube on auto play. It was already very horny for Donald Trump as the US election was coming up but after watching a few of those the algo became convinced I wanted to watch nothing else. When I woke up ~8 hours later it had filled the entire front page and all side bar video suggestions with the face of that unbearable retard. I'm convinced this is how youtube changes all of us into ufologists. After this came a period where I more-carefully picked the videos I watched. Before I would watch anything that spiked my curiosity. This changed into "Do I want this in my feed for the next 3 weeks?". I just looked for an example and my feed has a bitcoin video. I've been waiting for those to go away for 15 years. I don't question someone is interested in those. My own word filter is like, go ahead, say it once, say the word, say bitcoin one time, try me. Oddly, if an article consistently calls it BC without explaining what it refers to it might actually be worth reading. I suggest someone creates something like an app store or extension platform where the user can pick or buy their own algorithms each with their own exotic brand of configuration screen. You could entirely create one that costs thousands per month to run and is actually worth it. Have it take in my browser history, my investment portfolio, the books I own, the conversations my phone listened in on, check my agenda how much time I have for doomscrolling and my activity for how much time I actually sink into it. Dump a bunch of llm tokens into the task. Run some complicated prompts.
cheevly 27d ago
That’s an interesting algorithm you use to classify anything driven by an algorithm.
- Tanjreeve 27d ago
  A time posted sort is an algorithm too. But that's obviously not what's meant here even if the "gotcha" is there for that too. It's the combination of profitability motivations and manipulation of dopamine responses that are the outcomes people object to.
LogicFailsMe 27d ago
With an open API, there are IMO paths to an LLM* cultivating one's algorithmic feeds to only show you what you actually want to see as opposed to engaging you by enraging you, but without regulation, the social media companies will block that by any means necessary. And then, even if you did achieve a truly personalized feed, there will be accusations you're limiting your worldview to a filter bubble**. And sure, you are. Still beats algorithmic rage-baiting. It's up to you to figure out how much you wish to engage IMO, not some tech company or virtue signaling concern troll influencer. *An LLM is an algorithm too, duh. **https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble

voncheese 27d ago

> My opinion, anything driven by an algorithm is inherently bad. I really like this simple statement. It gets to the heart of what is bad about social media (at least to me). Its one thing if a site has the same content that I have to actually go and crawl through myself to find things that interest me, its another when the site thinks it knows what I want/like and guides me. The former forces me to engage my brain and explicitly engage with content (good or bad) the latter enables my brain to implicitly engage with content (good or bad). Thank you for the statement!

acutesoftware 27d ago

That is good, but it should be qualified a little. If the algorithm simply says "sort by most recent", then it is pretty good. It is the profit driven algorithms that are doing the damage.

biophysboy 27d ago

yes, the fundamental BS assumption of algorithmic social media is that human desire and curiosity is legible, and can be calculated in a straightforward way.

6510 27d ago

ATM the killer product would be a "bring your own algo" message board/socio thing/infinite scroll endorphin generator/etc I run a simple badword filter on my rss aggregator and it already outperforms anything big tech can come up with by a very large margin. Back when advertisements weren't 40 minute long I one time fell asleep while watching youtube on auto play. It was already very horny for Donald Trump as the US election was coming up but after watching a few of those the algo became convinced I wanted to watch nothing else. When I woke up ~8 hours later it had filled the entire front page and all side bar video suggestions with the face of that unbearable retard. I'm convinced this is how youtube changes all of us into ufologists. After this came a period where I more-carefully picked the videos I watched. Before I would watch anything that spiked my curiosity. This changed into "Do I want this in my feed for the next 3 weeks?". I just looked for an example and my feed has a bitcoin video. I've been waiting for those to go away for 15 years. I don't question someone is interested in those. My own word filter is like, go ahead, say it once, say the word, say bitcoin one time, try me. Oddly, if an article consistently calls it BC without explaining what it refers to it might actually be worth reading. I suggest someone creates something like an app store or extension platform where the user can pick or buy their own algorithms each with their own exotic brand of configuration screen. You could entirely create one that costs thousands per month to run and is actually worth it. Have it take in my browser history, my investment portfolio, the books I own, the conversations my phone listened in on, check my agenda how much time I have for doomscrolling and my activity for how much time I actually sink into it. Dump a bunch of llm tokens into the task. Run some complicated prompts.

cheevly 27d ago

That’s an interesting algorithm you use to classify anything driven by an algorithm.

Tanjreeve 27d ago
A time posted sort is an algorithm too. But that's obviously not what's meant here even if the "gotcha" is there for that too. It's the combination of profitability motivations and manipulation of dopamine responses that are the outcomes people object to.

LogicFailsMe 27d ago

With an open API, there are IMO paths to an LLM* cultivating one's algorithmic feeds to only show you what you actually want to see as opposed to engaging you by enraging you, but without regulation, the social media companies will block that by any means necessary. And then, even if you did achieve a truly personalized feed, there will be accusations you're limiting your worldview to a filter bubble**. And sure, you are. Still beats algorithmic rage-baiting. It's up to you to figure out how much you wish to engage IMO, not some tech company or virtue signaling concern troll influencer. *An LLM is an algorithm too, duh. **https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble