The effects of algorithms on the public discourse • Hacker News Board

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#61

Post by lapcat » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 3:21 AM UTC

freddie_mercury wrote: post #30

I'm not sure "we" traded anything. Back in the day an absolutely minuscule portion of humanity read blogs. Technology Connections has 3 million subscribers. That's over 10x the number of people reading the most popular blogs in the world circa 2010[1]. And Technology Connections is only a moderately popular channel. If you look at the bigger channels like Mark Rober it is more like 350x. What actually happened was th…

> What actually happened was that the first generation of text-loving online people were eventually outnumbered by subsequent waves of "migration" by people who don't like text and prefer images and (especially) video. It was just replaced by a better product as the online audience expanded to become more representative of real people.

I think you're right about the waves of migration, but I disagree that the product is "better".

What we've really traded are in-person friendships for anonymous online interactions, and that's definitely worse for everyone, in my opinion.

What's distinctive of the old blogging era is that the amount of online content at the time was extremely limited. You couldn't endlessly scroll through blogs. You went online, read some stuff, and then went offline. Now people never go offline. Now the amount of online content is practically unlimited, and not only that, it's the type of content that people typically consume alone. We get sucked into spending so much time alone, our only company being online strangers who we've never met and never will meet. You talk about YouTube channels with millions of subscribers, but that million-to-one ratio of viewer to YouTuber precludes most direct human interaction.

The fact that both we and the masses in general have been sucked into this situation, this depersonalization, separation from in-person interactions, is a great societal harm. And I don't think it's ironic that I'm saying this online to anonymous strangers; I just think it's sad, another symptom of the problem.

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#62

Post by dangus » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 3:25 AM UTC

Especially on this forum, it feels like articles 80%+ identical to this one are posted very frequently. At this point, the web dying in a sea of enshittification is perhaps so much of a trope that people are quite aware.

We are surrounded by examples of sometimes mainstream products and services that reflect the way people are shifting their thinking and swinging the pendulum.

This survey isn't 100% the same exact topic, but I think that it's an illustration of my point that well over half of Americans say that social media has a negative impact. [1]

People know the present state is bad and I think they are starting to take their dollars and eyeballs elsewhere. It's just anecdotal, but the amount of people I know who fully pulled the plug on deleting social media accounts would have seemed incomprehensible 10 years ago.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/10/15/64-of-ame...

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#63

Post by zrobotics » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 3:25 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #52

whycome wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Veritasium is another popular creator that would overlap with the HN audience. It deliberately uses different thumbnails and titles when videos are new. It's a human (afaik) using the A/B suggestions in the back end. So it's like a second degree AI manipulation.

That crap—together with the nonsensical kinetic weapon video—genuinely turned me off his channel. It clowned him up in a way that felt gimmicky, almost aimed for children versus adults.

I can't put my finger on what exactly I find distasteful about his channel, but his content is just off-putting to me. The closest I can describe it is that it annoys me in the same way that shows on discovery or the history channel did 15-20 years ago before I quit watching cable TV. It just seems like it's over produced and glossing over details, maybe it's trying to aim fore a more general audience and that is what hurts it.

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#64

Post by arjie » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 3:27 AM UTC

arjie wrote: post #49

freddie_mercury wrote: post #30

I'm not sure "we" traded anything. Back in the day an absolutely minuscule portion of humanity read blogs. Technology Connections has 3 million subscribers. That's over 10x the number of people reading the most popular blogs in the world circa 2010[1]. And Technology Connections is only a moderately popular channel. If you look at the bigger channels like Mark Rober it is more like 350x. What actually happened was th…

The problem for people who preferred the text-based approach is that previously they were over-represented and found things they liked everywhere. Like you say, the vast majority of people prefer image reels, short-form video, microblogs like Twitter, or comments on aggregators like Reddit or HN. That's the truth, but that original cohort of people lost their place and there's no obvious substitute. I think that's pr…

One theory I had was that blogrolls were common previously and allowed for cluster navigation. My friends and I certainly had these pointing to each other because why wouldn't you? The big bloggers on HN I see are tptacek, rachelbythebay, and simonwillison and none of them have a blogroll. General wisdom in website SEO etc. is to keep the user on your page and not send them elsewhere and I thought that perhaps many people were adhering to that. However, I think blogrolls were just not common ever and I was in a bubble that had them and so thought they were.

Here's what I did to find out. I first used an RSS aggregate feed that I recall: Planet Debian. I then picked out a ten year old archive of that feed but not on September 11 itself (well because you know). And the data says that blogrolls were always rare! So it's not that.

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#65

Post by lutusp » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 3:29 AM UTC

The article makes many good points, it's written by someone who knows how to write an essay, and it mentions Linux.

Technology-adept people will always have ways to avoid the prevailing swamp of dark patterns, but that's not corporate America's target anyway -- that target is people who constantly react to things, who don't exercise agency, who don't possess any measurable degree of autonomy.

That fact results from our broken educational system. In school, people are trained to surrender their autonomy early on. People aren't being taught how to think, they're being told what to think. And if we don't fix that problem, no later interventions have any hope of succeeding.

Few things have simple causes, but this is an exception. Most people are brainless consumers because that's public education's goal. It's not an unintended side effect.

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#66

Post by Karrot_Kream » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 3:33 AM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #61

freddie_mercury wrote: post #30

I'm not sure "we" traded anything. Back in the day an absolutely minuscule portion of humanity read blogs. Technology Connections has 3 million subscribers. That's over 10x the number of people reading the most popular blogs in the world circa 2010[1]. And Technology Connections is only a moderately popular channel. If you look at the bigger channels like Mark Rober it is more like 350x. What actually happened was th…

> What actually happened was that the first generation of text-loving online people were eventually outnumbered by subsequent waves of "migration" by people who don't like text and prefer images and (especially) video. It was just replaced by a better product as the online audience expanded to become more representative of real people. I think you're right about the waves of migration, but I disagree that the product…

Most of the people that hang out in normie social networks "touch grass" a lot more frequently than the types that hang out on text forums. Text forums tend to attract a high number of folks with social anxiety or other circumstances that keep them from socializing which puts them in bubbles more.

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#67

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 3:35 AM UTC

SilverElfin wrote: post #56

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what do you think the conclusion is. What’s a better model than a non gatekeeping democratic one? Sort of the question for our generation. I wish I had an answer.

To get more specific - by which measurable trait would you gatekeep, if you would prefer gatekeeping? Age? Income? IQ? Some sort of social reputation score? Civics tests? What would lead to better choices but also avoid populist revolution?

Real identities as a first step?

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#68

Post by hollerith » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 3:38 AM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #61

freddie_mercury wrote: post #30

I'm not sure "we" traded anything. Back in the day an absolutely minuscule portion of humanity read blogs. Technology Connections has 3 million subscribers. That's over 10x the number of people reading the most popular blogs in the world circa 2010[1]. And Technology Connections is only a moderately popular channel. If you look at the bigger channels like Mark Rober it is more like 350x. What actually happened was th…

> What actually happened was that the first generation of text-loving online people were eventually outnumbered by subsequent waves of "migration" by people who don't like text and prefer images and (especially) video. It was just replaced by a better product as the online audience expanded to become more representative of real people. I think you're right about the waves of migration, but I disagree that the product…

>What's distinctive of the old blogging era is that the amount of online content at the time was extremely limited. You couldn't endlessly scroll through blogs.

That is not true: when the first blog started in 1996 or so, text was being added to the web so fast that nobody could read even 1% of it. (Ditto text on the newsgroups before the rise of the web.)

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#69

Post by rmunn » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 3:48 AM UTC

the_af wrote: post #41

rmunn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, YouTube Premium because I can't stand ads. Yes, I'm aware I'm paying the mafia thugs to leave me alone. It sucks. uBlock Origin has been able to block 100% of Youtube ads in my experience so far; granted I don't visit Youtube all the time. I also use yt-dlp to download videos so that I can timeshift them and watch them later when I'm not connected to WiFi and yet not burn through my phone data. This also happ…

> uBlock Origin has been able to block 100% of Youtube ads in my experience so far; What about mobile and the YouTube app?

I don't use the Youtube app on mobile, precisely because I've been unable to block ads in it. Instead, I do one of two things: either pre-download the video with yt-dlp then copy the .mp4 to my phone and watch it with the VLC app, or else if there's a video I need to watch right now and all I have is my phone, I use the NewPipe app (https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe, GPL 3, has to be sideloaded because of course Google won't allow it in the Google Play store) to watch the video without ads. Every so often Google changes the internals of how Youtube works, and then NewPipe fails until they get out a new release, but it's been working fine for the past several months.

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#70

Post by jhanschoo » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 3:56 AM UTC

arjie wrote: post #64

arjie wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem for people who preferred the text-based approach is that previously they were over-represented and found things they liked everywhere. Like you say, the vast majority of people prefer image reels, short-form video, microblogs like Twitter, or comments on aggregators like Reddit or HN. That's the truth, but that original cohort of people lost their place and there's no obvious substitute. I think that's pr…

One theory I had was that blogrolls were common previously and allowed for cluster navigation. My friends and I certainly had these pointing to each other because why wouldn't you? The big bloggers on HN I see are tptacek, rachelbythebay, and simonwillison and none of them have a blogroll. General wisdom in website SEO etc. is to keep the user on your page and not send them elsewhere and I thought that perhaps many p…

Niches in the internet today still use webrings, you can still find them with a Google search and some navigation.