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Instagram Has Become SkyMall
121–130 of 341 posts
Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall
#122Ok, so I'm going to hijack this slightly... I'm an elderly (mid-40s) non-USian techie, and I've never done Instagram. On Facebook I mostly follow people I've largely lost touch with in real life (particular these past couple of years), and on Twitter it's news sources and journalists, plus a selection of 'celebs' from various niche interests like tech, sci-fi, winter sports and comedy. Am I likely to be missing anyth…
I know a few people who get severe anxiety after spending too much time on there. I don’t use it but it seems really negative because of the algorithm forcing polarizing, stress-inducing content on you and your friends and family. It might possibly be okay if you strictly follow a non political artist or two that you like
I think even the apolitical stuff causes a different flavor of the same anxiety though on some deeper level based on the comparing-your-insides-to-other-peoples-outsides phenomena. What I cant figure out is why so many of my artist friends are on there so willingly with seemingly no conscious awareness of any toxic effects. I seriously feel like my partner and I are the only artists who find IG toxic but we have to be on there because its essentially required for anyone in the arts...
Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really dislike the suggestion "just have better self control". It's you versus an army of machine learning experts all tuning algorithm on personal data about you to learn your weaknesses and bait you into spending more time on the app. Blaming the consumer ignores the adversarial role that the apps play in our lives.
The fact that you use the term "bait" illustrates that it is about self-control and not compulsion. It's absolutely not adversarial. People voluntarily install these apps. This is opt-in advertising.
They don't install the apps for the purpose of seeing advertising, and there's no way to opt out of the ads, so I don't think that is a good assessment.
Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall
#124what else was it supposed to be? An educational website?
Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presumably using the app? The thing I hate most is if I click on search it starts autoplaying some random thing that has no relevance to my social circles, until I start typing my search query (usually just trying to find a friend or an account I already follow).
I generally assume that installing an app to use a website is voluntarily opting in to a worse experience, so you're probably right. Still, though, maybe a PiHole would be effective?
I'm running one and it makes no difference.
Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it is possible to do things ass- backwards. The first way is better for consumers, the second way exploits consumers at a subconscious level, and is more often leveraged to maximize profit than to benefit consumers. E.g., Imagine all the good pharmaceutical research that could be funded if we just allowed blatant snake oil to be sold for unlimited profit? Surely the ends justify the means? Corporations trend tow…
> Imagine all the good pharmaceutical research that could be funded if we just allowed blatant snake oil to be sold for unlimited profit? Head into your nearest pharmacy and check out what they sell. Aisles upon aisles of homeopathic "drugs" that do nothing and cost nothing to produce.
My nearest pharmacy doesn't sell many homeopathics, and I live in the USA - land of the hucksters and home of the deregulators.
It's got aisles for fungii, ears and eyes, cuts and bruises, stomach stuff, cold/flu/allergies, prophylactics, etc etc. But the closest thing to unapproved cure-alls are the stronger sort of cough drops.
There are plenty of stores that sell sketchy supplements, but they usually don't have prescription pickup counters with pharmacists.
Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall
#127Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall
#128"hey, do you ever find it a huge hassle to pour cereal from a box?" Just like the Snuggie, many of these products were invented to help people with various disabilities. See e.g. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/20/17791354/products-pe...
Can you show me a snuggle ad with a disabled person in it
Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall
#129Instagram, a place where I used to share pictures with my close friends and family. Now, useless ads and inappropriate posts from random kids I have zero interest in seeing.
Kind of like reddit or YouTube when you're not singed in. The amount of garbage takes your breath away. Neither is not great anyway but then you find it can be worse.
Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall
#130Before I completely dropped social media, I had a f—k the algorithm attitude towards the ads. I made a point of clicking through everything that was completely uninteresting to me. That road led to a non-stop flood of class-action lawyer ads.
It's interesting how this exposes the dynamics of ad-space. Advertisements as points in a metric space A. Clicking ads as a contractive mapping C:A->A. Class-action lawsuit ads as a fixed point in A when iterating C. This must imply something interesting about human psychology or ad economics, or both. Why does the fixed point end up as class action suits and not something else? It's not what I would have expected.
Why is clicking ads a function from the space of ads to the space of ads?
Why is it a metric space? Why is it a contraction?