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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

#61

Post by scics »

lolinder wrote: post #48
scics wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Hey, that's not fair. We all engage with other people's ideas all the time, no one is really a unique thinker. The best model I have for intellectual activity is that it's a multiple-millennia-long conversation between people over generations. The main thing is that it's important to acknowledge who it is that you're replying to and to be very clear about to what degree you're synthesizing their thoughts versus contr…

> We’re all derivative thinkers in the end

Some more derivative than others.

If someone is going to expound on unique thought, I’d hope they live in a cave in the woods making unique cave drawings with their feces or riding a pale green elephant wearing magnetic boots upside down within a large refrigerator.

If you want to really be a unique thinker, sure you can listen, and aggregate, summarize, but don’t regurgitate.

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

#63

Post by mikrl »

I deleted Xitter for this reason recently.

Too much disinfo: community notes and grok are IMO just running cover for the disinfo firehose.

Saw the highest profile figure on the platform (yes him) retweet the most knee jerk takes that could be easily fact checked, but weren’t.

Instead of getting upset or trying to fight it, I yanked out the algo slop cable and am back in the real world. It’s great.

Edit: I didn’t really use it before 2024, so I cannot comment on what it was like under the last management.

I also tend to seek out conflicting views to my own when reading books, so it’s not that I’m just raging at ‘the other side’ either.

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

#64

Post by richie_adler »

timewizard wrote: post #51
svara wrote: post #13

Social media has really proven that phrase that "the medium is the message", which I remember long ago thinking was a little odd and not obviously true. With all the new stuff coming out in the LLM field, I've taken a cynically mechanistic view to this: We're basically being conditioned by (the currently popular crop of) social media to work in very short context windows, which aren't sufficient for advanced reasonin…

I don't understand this regression to the binary. Your social media tools allow you to block content. I use this feature on youtube all the time. If I see a channel that's posting garbage or propaganda or flat out lies I just click the three dots and say 'Don't Recommend Channel.' My youtube feed is a pleasant experience every day. There's no CNN or Fox news, no yelling talking heads trying to convince each other in…

Your approach (which I share) requires thought and discernment, which is a scarce resource nowadays. People intend to turn their brains off when they doomscroll. (I'll never understand the desire.)

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

#65

Post by Xiol32 »

hooverd wrote: post #55
lolinder wrote: post #19

The author sort of (but not really) acknowledges this midway through, but this is basically a summary of the most recent Technology Connections video, Algorithms are breaking how we think : https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA I'd rather they acknowledge Alec as the inspiration/source for this post at the beginning and explicitly, rather than just mentioning the video in passing midway through, but at least they do link to i…

Technology connections is great. I've never been more excited to listen to a man talk about dishwashers for 20 minutes.

Still can't find powder where I am. It's all tabs. I need that prewash, dammit!

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

#66

Post by richie_adler »

stego-tech wrote: post #40
lysace wrote: post #31

Reddit is unfortunately a major thing in my life. There's an eternal battle between left and right politics in my small European country's relevant subreddits. Not very healthy - it's like a never ending feed of "someone is wrong on the Internet". For the record: "right" here is roughly equivalent with the political position of the US Democratic party. Unfortunately these subreddits are not very balanced, so when I d…

What finally helped me break out of those bad habits was reframing who I was trying to convince of an argument. Let's face it, it's highly unlikely you're going to ever convince someone you're directly arguing with online just by the simple fact you're arguing, which often suggests some sort of impasse . Instead, argue as if you're trying to convince the bored reader who has climbed down through the comments (for som…

Very positive attitude. Beware the sealions, but keep up!

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

#67

Post by atonse »

hooverd wrote: post #55
lolinder wrote: post #19

The author sort of (but not really) acknowledges this midway through, but this is basically a summary of the most recent Technology Connections video, Algorithms are breaking how we think : https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA I'd rather they acknowledge Alec as the inspiration/source for this post at the beginning and explicitly, rather than just mentioning the video in passing midway through, but at least they do link to i…

Technology connections is great. I've never been more excited to listen to a man talk about dishwashers for 20 minutes.

This is exactly why I describe HN as “my home on the internet”

These are my fellow people that will happily watch a 20 or 40 min video about how dishwashers work, or his more recent video about replicating old style Christmas lights.

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

#68

Post by grumpy-de-sre »

gavmor wrote: post #23

Glad to see Bluesky mentioned. I look forward to trading custom feed algorithms like Pokémon: https://stronglytyped.uk/articles/bluesky-firehose-meet-hack...

Recommendation for the EU, please force social media platforms to offer support for custom feed algorithms/plugins. If they don't offer them, ban them from the EU market.

Long term, once we figure out how to generate feeds that are aren't socially corrosive dumpster fires. Mandate platforms default to using one of a set of approved models (maybe we need a recommendation engine benchmark that scores social divisiveness).

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

#70

Post by nfriedly »

After watching the Technology Connections video, I realized that YouTube ReVanced has an option to default to the subscriptions tab rather than the home page. It doesn't seem that different in my case, but I probably am catching some things that I would have missed otherwise.
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