61–70 of 107 posts
I deleted my account after many years when X recently made the Chronological Feed setting ephemeral, defaulting back to the Algorithmic Feed each time the page is refreshed. No away I'm going to let that level of outrage-baiting garbage even so much as flash before my eyes.
"We need more funding into open protocols that decentralize algorithmic ownership; open platforms that give users a choice of algorithm and platform provider; and algorithmic transparency across our information ecosystem." This sounds like a call to separate the aggregation step from the content. Reasonable enough, but does it really address the root cause? Aren't we just as polarized in a world where there are dozen…
I’d hope people wouldn’t intentionally pick the political extremism feed if they had any other option (although it’s hard to say).
Oddly enough, X is the only platform i've been able to teach to not show me culture war stuff, from either side. It just shows me AI in the "For You."
I've been pretty consistent about telling Bluesky I want to see less of anything political and also disciplined about not following anybody who talks about Trump or gender or how anybody else is causing their problems. I see very little trash.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this the result of a feedback loop from musk joining or did they just accelerate the overall decline of the platform with him joining? Some might say it was going this way even before he picked it up, but it was certainly an inflection point when he joined either way. All modern social media is pretty toxic to society, so I don't participate. Even HN/Reddit is borderline. Nothing is quite as good as the irc and fo…
> Even HN/Reddit is borderline. It's the proliferation of downvoting. It disincentivizes speaking your honest opinion and artificially boosts mass-appeal ragebait. It's detrimental to having organic conversations. "But the trolls" they say. In practice it's widely abused. Using HN as an example, there are legitimate textbook opinions that will boost your comment to the top, and ones that will quickly sink to the bott…
Ultimately, I think it comes back to people value their online persona way too much and this is something we've intentionally marched towards.
Why anyone is still using X after 2025 is a mystery (I know, it's where everyone is, but the moral implications are wild)
Lovely thought Ben. Good to hear from you! I spent a lot of my life and money thinking about building better algorithms (over five years). We have a bit of a chicken / egg problem. Is it the algorithm or is it the preference of the Users which is the problem. I'd argue the latter. What I learned which was counter-intuitive was that the vast majority of people aren't interested in thinking hard. This community, in lar…
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Stupid mainstream science.
>... and leftist politics ...
>... nor do they see that their views are political in nature.
You don't say. Personally, I respect comments that prove their own claims.
Oh my. Now that X is affecting people's politics (for the better IMO), suddenly people care about the influence of algorithms over politics...
An algorithm designed today with the goal of helping users pick the most profitable product photo would probably steer people towards using caucasian models, and because eBay's cut is a percentage, they would be incentivized to use it.
Studies show that conservatives tend to respond more positively to sponsored content. If this is true, algorithm-driven ad-sponsored social sites will tend towards conservative content.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1756-2171.12...
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00913367.2024.2...
Lovely thought Ben. Good to hear from you! I spent a lot of my life and money thinking about building better algorithms (over five years). We have a bit of a chicken / egg problem. Is it the algorithm or is it the preference of the Users which is the problem. I'd argue the latter. What I learned which was counter-intuitive was that the vast majority of people aren't interested in thinking hard. This community, in lar…
> This community, in large part, is an exception where many members pride themselves on intellectually challenging material. That's not the norm. We're not the norm. I recommend against putting HN on a pedestal. It just leads to disappointment.
Why anyone is still using X after 2025 is a mystery (I know, it's where everyone is, but the moral implications are wild)