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Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

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Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#291

Post by tim333 »

zug_zug wrote: post #150

I feel like there are two approaches that are never gonna work: self-control and asking companies to change. I think there is an obvious answer though: taking control of the algorithm via AI. I don't think we're there yet, but it's gotta be a matter of time until somebody makes a local AI agent that browses all these feeds and then filters them to your satisfaction (x% about politics, y% upbeat, z% violence, z% about…

I was thinking that, that what I'd like is an AI that knows me and I can ask what's out there I'd like to see and I can give it instructions. Not really just percentages but what's interesting for me which I guess requires quite a lot of knowledge of me.

Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#292

Post by 4gotunameagain »

doubled112 wrote: post #206
4gotunameagain wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely, but as you said, it's only a bit. Things like hn or old.reddit still carry most if not all of the negative effects of infinite feeds. What I would give credit to hn for is that being text only, it forces you at least to think a bit and not blindly consume a video for example.

On HN, at least, once I get a few pages in I usually realize I’m just seeing articles from a few hours/days ago. I know then it is time to take a break. It isn’t infinite the same way TikTok will or YouTube used to keep playing something you haven’t seen yet.

It is not the same for sure. But it is still not harmless imo.

How you justify your addiction is entirely up to you though ;)

Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#293

Post by ThatMedicIsASpy »

pests wrote: post #242
ThatMedicIsASpy wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube disrespects any person that is multilingual. They shove AI translations into our faces because the content creator is responsible for disabling it not the user. Instead of German videos I get German videos with English AI audio. I keep getting videos from the same game I always ignore or say not interested on my front page. Youtube wants my money. They will never get my money when they come up with things lik…

Paying them money removes all ads though, scammy or not. And they just announced their lower priced tier, although I think not all genres are ad-free.

Ad blockers do the same and will be my choice. It is their choice to not moderate their main business. It is their choice to disable monetization on history, ..., people who say fuck in the first minute.

Is it that hard to look at all the BS and say - no not my money?

Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#294

Post by bgood456 »

velancogito wrote: post #12

I would disable all short videos in the feed on every platform because they are completely useless but it is not possible in these apps. I can't remove the apps because I might need them to check something important or write someone, so I forced to use my willpower to skip these videos everyday.

Last year I realized I could block things on facebook with the ublock ad blocker. Now when I go to facebook there's a clean empty page and I can navigate to just what I want to see. If you're using something app based that won't work though

Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#295

Post by OisinMoran »

tmoravec wrote: post #141
OisinMoran wrote: post #130

I've actually been working on something tackling exactly this for a little while now. It's a social network where you post to your own curated tags, and people can follow any subset of those. So you can post both your "local small town history" and also "important cs papers", and those interested in either or both can follow as they choose. It's alts by default. And to start, it's focused on links. Reverse chronologi…

The basic idea with tags sounds very similar to Reddit. Especially with the initial focus on links. Reddit has degenerated into something a bit different, however. Why would your app stay true to the original concept in the face of scaling and financial pressure?

For one, the revenue model for lynkmi is user subscriptions rather than ads. I'm taking a hard stance on never doing ads as that distorts the incentives. I want the money to come from people who like the product.

Also tags are more personal like "tmoravec/cryptozoology" rather than a global "cryptozoology", so intentionally focused on keeping social circles smaller.

Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#297

Post by zimpenfish »

squigz wrote: post #213
TylerE wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t, however stop it from suggestion huge blocks of shorts or crappy free to play games.

Yes you can, with something like uBlock Origin, or even a simple stylesheet override.

Sadly not available when using the Apple TV to watch YouTube. If there's a NextDNS / PiHole method that stops YouTube ads, I could probably implement that...

Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#298

Post by zimpenfish »

immibis wrote: post #246
dmd wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You somehow must be able to, as everyone I know has feeds full of that sort of thing, and I've never seen even one short or game on my youtube home page.

Nope. You specifically can't disable shorts, no matter how much you want to - so much that YouTube Revanced has this feature.

> You specifically can't disable shorts

You can use the three dots to say "Not Interested" on the Shorts shelf but it only hides it for 30 days and then the insidious little worm comes right back.

Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#299

Post by philipwhiuk »

alwa wrote: post #217
latexr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does HN fit into that? I’m not trying to be cheeky, I’m genuinely interested, HN is technically an infinite website (though you do have to click “More”) yet you’re here. Do you use the noprocrast settings? Does HN just fit differently into your brain? Something else?

One difference is that HN uses a ranked list. You can generally count on things getting less salient the farther you “scroll.” It’s the same way that infinitely-scrolling Google results don’t have the same effect as infinitely-scrolling content chutes, which exploit the hunch that there might be something gold just around the next swipe…

I think the 'More...' link at the bottom is definitely invoking the same hunch.

Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#300

Post by ants_everywhere »

TylerE wrote: post #270
ants_everywhere wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes with the pedantic caveat that those aren't similar in the sense that one is a common confusion and the other is correct. The Nordic model is the sort of economy and political structure that the 19th century socialists explicitly reacted against and rejected. It's a representation of mainstream liberal democratic theory not of socialism. On the other hand democracy was always understood to be representative becaus…

Words evolve with time and usage. If someone said they were gonna send you a mail, would you expect an actual paper letter or an email?

These particular words haven't evolved in any meaningful way in the last century or so. If anything socialism now refers exclusively to revolutionary/militant utopian socialism whereas it had more varied meanings long ago. That's probably largely an artifact of the fact that socialism since the early 1900s has mainly been promoted by socialist countries after a revolution.

Go on a socialist forum and ask them what they think about markets or mixed economies. E.g.

- https://www.reddit.com/r/Socialism_101/comments/w03n2p/what_...

- https://www.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/comments/19558...

- https://www.reddit.com/r/Socialism_101/comments/19ewm26/can_...

- https://www.google.com/search?q=reddit+socialism+mixed+econo...

It's harder to search other socialist forums like the darknet ones, but you see the same patterns there

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