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Bouncer: Block "crypto", "rage politics", and more from your X feed using AI

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31–40 of 138 posts

Re: Bouncer: Block "crypto", "rage politics", and more from your X feed using AI

#31
post #11

Adding to the chorus: if you need to apply a solution like this, it's probably time to walk away from the platform. (Well, the right time to walk away would have been years ago, but...)

I was actually thinking of making a similar app for hacker news comments. Should we all quit hacker news too?

Re: Bouncer: Block "crypto", "rage politics", and more from your X feed using AI

#33
I get the idea but honestly asking: if you filter out stuff like this will you end up with a completely blank feed on x? To me it kind of just seems like we're all going to need to curate our own RSS feeds in the future. eg: real people who are insightful, rather than rely on any kind of algorithm.

Re: Bouncer: Block "crypto", "rage politics", and more from your X feed using AI

#34
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All remotely popular online public spaces are completely infiltrated by bots/propagandists/trolls/morons/etc. If you could successfully filter that type of content out you'd end up with a much larger pool of valid/authentic content to access than if you abandoned the space altogether and switched to some very obscure/niche space that's yet to be manipulated.

Bluesky has a default feed that is just the posts/reposts of the people who you choose to follow, in reverse chronological order. No need for an algorithm to decide what is worth seeing.

Twitter/X has the same feature. It is all I use.

Re: Bouncer: Block "crypto", "rage politics", and more from your X feed using AI

#35
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Network effects are stronger than we are. People are there because people are there.

And when you are not there you are not there. We are way too obsessed with missing a thing. May it be a popular figure or someone we know in person. The reality is that it's actually not too bad to miss things and most information still gets through. Especially the one that's important. You might even miss out on a lot of crap that is filtered out when it gets to you. I am happy on my personal Mastodon instance and o…

The problem is that your definition of "crap" is probably a bit different from others. Everyone probably has a slightly different definition. Also, your feed is probably mostly stuff that was posted on X first and replicated over somehow. Network effect is real.

That being said, there are clearly multiple active automated influence operations happening on X all the time. If Elon wants X to stick around, it would be in his interest to put a stop to those. The default feed is full of posts from those bots; that's also a big problem they (X) needs to fix.

Re: Bouncer: Block "crypto", "rage politics", and more from your X feed using AI

#36

This would be great for Reddit - the king of rage politics.

Any social site inclusive of this one ought to have such a feature.

Agreed. I am getting tired of half the HN posts being about politics. I come here to get away from that stuff, but it is becoming a greater portion of the content.

Re: Bouncer: Block "crypto", "rage politics", and more from your X feed using AI

#37
What I don't understand how difficult it seems to be for some people to simply ignore topics or people they don't like. If an algorithmic feed keeps presenting you with certain topics, it's largely because you're engaging with them. Isn't that on you?

I don't use Twitter but I use Tiktok and you know what I do when I see something I'm not interested in? I scroll up. If it's someone who never has anything interesting to say, I just block them. And I never think about them ever again.

I rarely see anything about crypto. I don't even think about it really. Go back ~4 years and everything on HN was about crypto this and blockchain that but that's how it goes. There are fads and, more importantly, there are people just trying to get their bag with their latest "acquire me please" startups. Actually, crypto just had a bunch of straight rug pulls too. And then there was NFTs...

Anyway, I've worked for my Tiktok fyp. It's a constant moving target for the platform too, like these bot accounts that somehow get to 10K followers and then appear on your fyp with audio over a movie or TV show to get around copyright detection. I honestly don't know how they haven't solved that problem yet.

All these platforms, particularly Twitter, put their thumbs on the scales about what gets distribution but for any platform with a block feature, this seems like a "you" problem if your feed isn't what you want.

Also, "rage politics" in general just means "things I disagree with" whenever anyone talks about what they see on any social media platform.

Block and move on.

Re: Bouncer: Block "crypto", "rage politics", and more from your X feed using AI

#39

This would be great for Reddit - the king of rage politics.

The problem with Reddit is different. Poor quality human moderation is the problem there. Basically who has 10 hours a day to read Reddit? Answer, terminally online bubble people who have no business moderating other's posts. Maybe if the LLM could completely bypass the moderators then it could work though.

Re: Bouncer: Block "crypto", "rage politics", and more from your X feed using AI

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any social site inclusive of this one ought to have such a feature.

Agreed. I am getting tired of half the HN posts being about politics. I come here to get away from that stuff, but it is becoming a greater portion of the content.

Look at the number of responses on each article to see why that happens. Also, most articles aren't about politics. But the ones with lots of responses and discussion usually are. Network effect sucks sometimes...
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