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The effects of algorithms on the public discourse
81–90 of 97 posts
Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Real identities as a first step?
> People are bastards in real life. People are angels anonymously. This is exactly the opposite of my experience.
They must have mixed up the two?!! This is even a meme: the most measured person in real life being absolutely vicious online!
Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse
#83The 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 o…
You're talking about a specific educational system ("our" system, "public education's goal"), but what the article is talking about is global. And the world's educational systems vary a lot. Now, yes, the effect is more pronounced in the US, which is probably where some blame can be placed on the educational system. But what can explain the remaining 95% (population-wise) of the world?
Maybe the algorithmic curation that's talked about here is enough on its own to prime the average user to behave a certain way. Or maybe humans are just like that and prefer it that way, and we're returning to the mean now that the internet is owned by average people. Either way, this seems to have a lot more complexity and I'm not sure if it can ever be solved at this point.
Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse
#84I'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…
> Back in the day an absolutely minuscule portion of humanity read blogs What I think it comes down to is us, on one level, grasping the benefits of elitist gatekeeping, but, on another level, not wanting to acknowledge that such mechanisms have benefits. The elitism I speak of isn’t one of wealth, family or schooling. Instead it’s intellectual curiosity. That seems to correlate with the foregoing; hence the discomfo…
It's not just gatekeeping. Recall the "Eternal September" concept. Prior to "Eternal September", it used to be that every September, a new wave of college students got access to the internet, and they would misbehave. But eventually they learned the norms of how to behave online, and things settled down.
That suggests a plan for internet reform. Start with a small group of contributors devoted to a better internet. Let new people in at a slow rate, so they acclimatize to norms of how to behave.
Maybe strict gatekeeping isn't actually necessary, and it's just about (a) starting with something good, and (b) adjusting the rate of newcomers to ensure that they actually acclimatize. If your platform grows 1% monthly, that will produce rapid compounding, yet could still be slow enough for acclimatization.
Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse
#85We used to use our curiosity to find stuff we liked, which felt more satisfying than any algorithm's statistically-determined aggregation. Today's kids will still do that, in their own way. I'm not convinced there's anything here other than old man and cloud. We did it our way, in our time. I don't think this generation is actually for-reals-this-time the one where technology finally neutered human curiosity and wrec…
I remember figuring out how Google operators worked (back when they still did) and using them to find mp3s, PDFs, and old servers.
The younger people I see on social media are mostly all on the plantation but at least some of them have found creative ways to use it for their own purposes (e.g. evading word filters or building their own communities on direct platforms like Discord or WhatsApp). I see this a lot on Reddit, too (although I’m not sure if the crowd there is young anymore).
I think the key issue is that a lot of kids see the internet primarily as something they can make money off of, so they go to the platforms that promise a ready-made audience. When I was younger having anything I put on the internet get even a few hundred views would have had me elated, whereas for an aspiring professional content creator, getting a few hundred views just means that you failed.
For those who don’t have these kinds of aspirations, the new meta is group chats; Discord, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter. The advantage here is that the messaging space is highly competitive and users are not going to tolerate receiving their messages in non-chronological order the way they do with their feed; this makes private messaging somewhat future-proof against the worse excesses of social media while still being more accessible than something like IRC.
Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse
#86The "old" internet still exists and is alive and well on what I'll call "single issue" web based forums. Photo.net is still here, as are similar groups for cars, bikes, and rabbit holes I have yet to break my ankle in. Unlike social media, few of these forums have mechanisms to "like" or upvote posts so there is no reward for posting just to attract attention, whether it be positive or negative. That changes the dyna…
> Unlike social media, few of these forums have mechanisms to "like" or upvote posts so there is no reward for posting just to attract attention, whether it be positive or negative.
I’m not convinced. 4chan doesn’t have any of these mechanisms, so the proxy just becomes the number of replies you receive. The chief benefit of forums is that they are smaller. This is good if the original base of users is good, and untenable if they are bad—and they usually are bad. I always hated forums when I was younger and was glad when Reddit killed them. Of course, Reddit brought its own problems, but even in the state it is in today I find it infinitely preferable to forums.
Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse
#87Earlier 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…
BTW, I'm aware that yt-dlp is against Youtube's terms of service, but in America, the right to timeshift a broadcast was well-established in the days of VCRs by multiple court precedents. It has never been tested in court whether that right would also apply to Youtube and downloading videos from Youtube for the purpose of timeshifting, but IMHO it would apply, so I'm doing it. Also, while Youtube claims that adblocke…
> If there was a service that detected "here's a word from our sponsors" parts of the video and removed them, that would be altering Content
This exists and it's called SponsorBlock. It automatically skips past sponsored segments. Debatable if that is altering content though
Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> 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
It's missing the point to compare two types of people. You need to compare the so-called "normies" before and after. The statistics show that everyone is spending less time in-person socializing and more time online.
YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc., have millions or billions of users, and it's not the blog-loving old-school techies who are spending endless hours on them.
Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse
#89Yet another internet manifesto that just ends up being "Use FOSS" and little else. Laughed at using Linux to "to make technology fun again"; Using Linux isn't going to turn you into a cyberpunk rebel who has beaten the powers that be.
I must also say I dislike the obnoxious "Look at how quirky I am!" 90s web badges on an HTML5 page.
Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 cour…
I'm not familiar with NewPipe, I'll take a look!
Unfortunately yt-dlp is a no-go for me, I don't plan so far ahead and I mostly watch YouTube from my phone, usually when cooking dinner, doing the dishes, etc. That's why simply paying for YouTube Premium is (for me, and for now) the path of least friction. Paying off the thugs so they leave me alone :(