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My Feed, My Way

pm.gov.au

141–150 of 163 posts

Re: My Feed, My Way

#141
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * Alternatively, American govt takes the position of "American companies don't have to follow the laws of random countries just because they accept IP packets from those countries". American companies eliminate their official business presence in onerous legal regimes but keep serving users there Why would they do that? If they can't have a local business presence then they can't book local advertisers. Which direc…

They could still book global advertisers, in particular other foreign companies that also pulled out of the relevant jurisdictions.

But they already do that. They have local presences because they need it to get local ad dollars and trade locally.

You don't need a total solution to have an influence: it's a saturated market where you're only as good as quarterly growth figures.

Re: My Feed, My Way

#142
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not many people actually read news and books on their phones. I think there a lot of survivorship bias in this observation, where the thing you’re most likely to see people watching is the thing that’s most flashy.

A phone is a pretty bad proxy for what someone is actually doing with their attention

I kind of agree, but I will push back just to work through my conflicted feelings. In America 50% of people basically can't read. I think the official stat is 48% read at or BELOW a 6th grade level. The average American reads 0 books a year, shamefully myself included. Especially post covid, there is a serious degradation in social skills and using a phone instantly makes people more comfortable and less likely to socialize. The mobile gaming industry is 148B this year.

All that is to say, I don't think this forum is indicative of wider behavior AND smart people definitely inflate the value of "work" and "productivity" they do on their phone. We will never know unless we get Apple data, but I suspect a phone might be like 90% entertainment and 5% communication for most people. Maybe 5% is semi-productive work email, reading an article, etc.

I guess I am not sure if it matters where their attention goes. Although, it might be a bit of selective memory in how social people were before phones.

Re: My Feed, My Way

#143
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone measured that if a user is teenager boy, it will take Tik Tok 9 minutest to serve misogynistic content...

The thing that doesn't get written about is that precisely the same situation occurs for women. Decentering men is equivalent to MGTOW. The torrent of misandrist content on social media utterly dwarfs the amount of 'red pill' / manosphere or similar content. It's mainstream in a way outright misogynistic content hasn't been for decades. Worse still, it's almost impossible to have this discussion without the immediate…

I don't see much issue with FLINTA spaces, other than it still failing at the ye old question "how to easily filter bad people from people". The options for regular spaces are still HUGE, some people deciding to have FLINTA and apparently enjoying themselves is a plus.

Re: My Feed, My Way

#144
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not give people the option? They don’t all have to use it, but it means some can.

Because the people most severely impacted don't understand that they are being severely impacted.

that doesn't seem correct. it's equivalent to saying nobody should be allowed to drink because a small minority of ppl cannot control themslves

Re: My Feed, My Way

#145

> Just as we have basic safety standards for cars, toys or food, the duty of care applies basic standards for the online products we use every day. Aussie here. Great to see this. I don't think this goes far enough: I'd like to see addictive algorithms, content, and doomscrolling banned entirely. Not an option to see a different feed. Illegal. It's manipulative, hurts people, hurts children: make it illegal.

i hope they ban hacker news over there soon too

Re: My Feed, My Way

#146
post #21

Why do people (or at least politicians pretend to) believe that social networks are popular despite the content algos and not because of them? The reason Tik Tok blew up is because it shows you what you want to see without you twiddling with a dozen dials. Maybe giving people what they want is not great for them. I am ok with this argument. But then "giving people control" won't change anything. Vast majority of user…

> Why do people (or at least politicians pretend to) believe that social networks are popular despite the content algos and not because of them?

Some are, some not. But the motivation is the harm of algo-feeds, the potential for manipulations from bad actors.

> The reason Tik Tok blew up is because it shows you what you want to see without you twiddling with a dozen dials.

That's more of a delusion, it does not shows you what you want, but what engages you, which just happen often enough to be something you want.

> But then "giving people control" won't change anything.

Probably true, but feeds like are tapping into addiction-mechanisms, returning control can help to regulate this, and prevents at least lowers the harm.

Re: My Feed, My Way

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't any need to "look things up related to the conversation", and if that is seen as acceptable then that itself is a sign of how things have changed, and how addicted we all are to information.

Instead of spending 45 minuter discussing back and forth whether Tim Burton is still alive, we can take five seconds to look it up, and then move on to more interesting topics.

Discussing back and forth whether Tim Burton is still alive is a rabbit hole worth exploring.

Not sure what would be more interesting than that.

Re: My Feed, My Way

#148
> users can opt out of personally recommended content in their default feed and see the friends and creators they choose to follow.

This is huge. This would put turn (eg) Facebook back into what it used to be: a social network where you just see the people you know and follow.

Can't imagine Meta et al will accommodate this willingly.

Re: My Feed, My Way

#149
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a bus or train, barely one or two people are actually doing something other than watching something online. I mean, what else should I be doing? Self-analyzing and staring in the window?

Read, knitting/crochet, sleep, listen to music, play games (eg. emulator + pokemon games), study, read a newspaper, do crosswords, play chess online, watch a movie, listen to a podcast, learn a language, talk to other non-scrolling people, and yes, you can also stare outside, daydream or self-analyze, or even do nothing. Just a few decades ago we had a lot of dead times, it's not that crazy to pass an hour without ha…

Comments like this always ignore the fact that in the olden days before phones, a majority of people read newspapers or books and busybody news columnists bemoaned how everyone was lost in their media instead of socializing.

Literally nothing has changed in the past century other than the variety of idle tasks one can keep in their pocket. People chose to not engage then exactly the same as they do now.

Re: My Feed, My Way

#150
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could still book global advertisers, in particular other foreign companies that also pulled out of the relevant jurisdictions.

But they already do that. They have local presences because they need it to get local ad dollars and trade locally. You don't need a total solution to have an influence: it's a saturated market where you're only as good as quarterly growth figures.

Yes, but the value of local presence is only the marginal value of the local advertisers over foreign ones. It's not all the revenue from the country, and it can be possible to be not worth having a local presence but still worth operating from offshore.
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