Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

steveBK123 wrote: post #10

mark242 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want content aggregated by 3rd parties and drip-fed to me telling me what I should believe, what is important, and what I should focus on. > I want my AIs to give me a morning newspaper of content from across the internet (...) Please make this make sense.

Right, the myth of the neutral aggregator. The aggregator is going to generally have some opinion on it, whether it be your own opinion fed back to you, or those of the author. Whether that opinion is "right" or "wrong" is in the eye of beholder.. In some ways the recommendation engines feeding you your own preferences is the easiest thing to implement that satisfies the most people at once.

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

Post by steveBK123 » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 4:59 PM UTC

steveBK123 wrote: post #11

segasaturn wrote: post #4

Maybe that's a good thing? I remember a few years ago when journalists were outsourcing their reporting to Twitter and we had headlines like "The Internet is Freaking Out About X" when it was really a dozen nobodies on Twitter. The death of Twitter and the re-fragmentation of the internet sounds like a breath of fresh air compared to the purple haze of the last decade's centralized web.

Would agree. Some old school journalists from NYT wrote about that phenomenon. Colleagues doing a lot of stories that were basically the groupthink of their friend group or what they saw on Twitter. Part of it is economics/incentives leading journalists to have to churn out a lot of content. Part of it is laziness as it's a lot easier than going out into the field and actually talking to people.

Post by cogman10 » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 4:59 PM UTC

segasaturn wrote: post #4

Maybe that's a good thing? I remember a few years ago when journalists were outsourcing their reporting to Twitter and we had headlines like "The Internet is Freaking Out About X" when it was really a dozen nobodies on Twitter. The death of Twitter and the re-fragmentation of the internet sounds like a breath of fresh air compared to the purple haze of the last decade's centralized web.

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

JohnMakin wrote: post #8

> The very idea of popularity is up for debate: Is that trend really viral? Did everyone see that post, or is it just my little corner of the internet? This is exactly it. Consider a scenario that's likely fairly common given experiments I've done in the last several years. Say a site people still use to talk to/keep in touch with friends sometimes like IG/FB decides a user is "toxic" and either shadowbans them, or s…