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The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

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Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#71

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #67
SilverElfin wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get more specific - by which measurable trait would you gatekeep, if you would prefer gatekeeping? Age? Income? IQ? Some sort of social reputation score? Civics tests? What would lead to better choices but also avoid populist revolution?

Real identities as a first step?

> Real identities as a first step?

If we could answer the preceding question, we'd have solved society. People are bastards in real life. People are angels anonymously. (If anything, taking away real identities neuters the internet's celebrity tendency.)

The only gate with a track record is tendency towards exploration. When the internet was a frontier, it selected for curiosity and, if not intelligence, at least daring (for its own sake). When it became accessible, we got influencers.

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#72

Post by MarkusQ »

Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #67
SilverElfin wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get more specific - by which measurable trait would you gatekeep, if you would prefer gatekeeping? Age? Income? IQ? Some sort of social reputation score? Civics tests? What would lead to better choices but also avoid populist revolution?

Real identities as a first step?

> People are bastards in real life. People are angels anonymously.

This is exactly the opposite of my experience.

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#73

Post by freddie_mercury »

jchw wrote: post #40
freddie_mercury wrote: post #30

I'm not sure "we" traded anything. Back in the day an absolutely minuscule portion of humanity read blogs. Technology Connections has 3 million subscribers. That's over 10x the number of people reading the most popular blogs in the world circa 2010[1]. And Technology Connections is only a moderately popular channel. If you look at the bigger channels like Mark Rober it is more like 350x. What actually happened was th…

> Technology Connections has 3 million subscribers. That's over 10x the number of people reading the most popular blogs in the world circa 2010 That's what's kind of insane, community forums took maybe 20-30 people to feel "active", but you can't get a big enough slice of attention from that many people to actually use forums, even though the Internet has grown massively . Discovery is really hard: it used to be that…

To push back slightly, Discord says they have 19 million weekly active servers, which almost certainly outstrips the number of forums back in the day.

It just feels like there's been a shift away from the super public phpbb forum style, with distinct posts and threads of conversation.

But I'm not sure that's quite the same thing as all the communities going away.

As some examples from my own Discord:

A server for fans of pretty obscure, self published author Victoria Goddard.

A server for fans of Reiner Knizia, the world's most prolific and famous boardgame designer.

A server for fans of the Lancer RPG.

A server for people who play modern (primarily) Japanese card games.

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#74

Post by ffsm8 »

rmunn wrote: post #69
the_af wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> uBlock Origin has been able to block 100% of Youtube ads in my experience so far; What about mobile and the YouTube app?

I don't use the Youtube app on mobile, precisely because I've been unable to block ads in it. Instead, I do one of two things: either pre-download the video with yt-dlp then copy the .mp4 to my phone and watch it with the VLC app, or else if there's a video I need to watch right now and all I have is my phone, I use the NewPipe app ( https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe , GPL 3, has to be sideloaded because of cour…

Android Firefox has ublock origin support.

And there is also https://revanced.app/

Though I personally just pay the premium sub, as I use it to play music on most days.

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#75

Post by xyzelement »

startupsfail wrote: post #31
xyzelement wrote: post #21

I am friends with a lot of religious people and they are rocking technology right now. They use the internet purposefully - eg following rabbis who have a reputation that they found out about from someone in person. It's very old school and kinda cool to see people use technology and feel elevated rather than denigrated by it.

This is great to hear. Churches are often in the prime real estate areas, it'd be great, if the attendance / donations would fall to zero. And if these places would be redeveloped into open-for-all urban green islands. Rather than exclusive worship clubs.

I am unsure what your comment has to do with mine.

But I disagree with your value judgement. Open spaces are great - but men and women who believe in something greater than themselves is what makes the world go round.

Looking at fertility rates between religious and atheists, we'll need these churches and temples in the next generations.

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#76

Post by xboxnolifes »

startupsfail wrote: post #31
xyzelement wrote: post #21

I am friends with a lot of religious people and they are rocking technology right now. They use the internet purposefully - eg following rabbis who have a reputation that they found out about from someone in person. It's very old school and kinda cool to see people use technology and feel elevated rather than denigrated by it.

This is great to hear. Churches are often in the prime real estate areas, it'd be great, if the attendance / donations would fall to zero. And if these places would be redeveloped into open-for-all urban green islands. Rather than exclusive worship clubs.

Churches are the opposite of an exclusive club. They're open to everyone. At least the ones getting tax benefits for being a church.

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#77

Post by jchw »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #73
jchw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Technology Connections has 3 million subscribers. That's over 10x the number of people reading the most popular blogs in the world circa 2010 That's what's kind of insane, community forums took maybe 20-30 people to feel "active", but you can't get a big enough slice of attention from that many people to actually use forums, even though the Internet has grown massively . Discovery is really hard: it used to be that…

To push back slightly, Discord says they have 19 million weekly active servers, which almost certainly outstrips the number of forums back in the day. It just feels like there's been a shift away from the super public phpbb forum style, with distinct posts and threads of conversation. But I'm not sure that's quite the same thing as all the communities going away. As some examples from my own Discord: A server for fan…

> To push back slightly, Discord says they have 19 million weekly active servers, which almost certainly outstrips the number of forums back in the day.

Yeah, but most of the servers are very, very small. They're internet chatrooms. It's more like MSN group chats or IRC channels.

On the other hand, there were probably more small forums than most people realize, due to free forum hosts like Proboards.

Maybe most importantly, having a Discord chat is in no way the same overall effect as having a forum used to be.

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#78

Post by AnthonyMouse »

arjie wrote: post #49
freddie_mercury wrote: post #30

I'm not sure "we" traded anything. Back in the day an absolutely minuscule portion of humanity read blogs. Technology Connections has 3 million subscribers. That's over 10x the number of people reading the most popular blogs in the world circa 2010[1]. And Technology Connections is only a moderately popular channel. If you look at the bigger channels like Mark Rober it is more like 350x. What actually happened was th…

The problem for people who preferred the text-based approach is that previously they were over-represented and found things they liked everywhere. Like you say, the vast majority of people prefer image reels, short-form video, microblogs like Twitter, or comments on aggregators like Reddit or HN. That's the truth, but that original cohort of people lost their place and there's no obvious substitute. I think that's pr…

> I think that's primarily because there's no Schelling point for this. There's no single place where everyone who preferred the other form would go to.

It seems like what this needs is a search engine that actually surfaces that sort of thing, because that's not a chicken and egg problem. It can open on day one by indexing the existing non-commercial blogs and free-to-read substacks etc., which makes it immediately useful for people who are looking for that.

And then as more people use the search engine, people are more encouraged to create that kind of site because the people looking for it now have a way of actually finding it.

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#79

Post by lurk2 »

hollerith wrote: post #68
lapcat wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What actually happened was that the first generation of text-loving online people were eventually outnumbered by subsequent waves of "migration" by people who don't like text and prefer images and (especially) video. It was just replaced by a better product as the online audience expanded to become more representative of real people. I think you're right about the waves of migration, but I disagree that the product…

>What's distinctive of the old blogging era is that the amount of online content at the time was extremely limited. You couldn't endlessly scroll through blogs. That is not true: when the first blog started in 1996 or so, text was being added to the web so fast that nobody could read even 1% of it. (Ditto text on the newsgroups before the rise of the web.)

The issue the grandparent post is alluding to is more a change in consumer habits and technology. Even in 2005, recommendation algorithms were barely impacting the content you saw online. Facebook was chronological until around 2009 from what I remember; you could literally go online and find a friend had filled your feed by posting status updates over and over again. YouTube similarly prioritized your subscriptions over other content, and the other content was usually just whatever other people happened to be watching. You would go online once every couple of days, see what was new, and then log off. If there wasn’t anything new, finding it required a significantly greater time investment than opening up your short form video content app of choice.

There was also probably less duplication; these days you can find dozens of Reddit threads relevant to almost any given query, but most of them will have the same kind of comments. With short form video content you’ll often see 3 variations of the same meme within 15 minutes. Back in the early 2000s a lot of queries would only return a couple of relevant results.

Re: The effects of algorithms on the public discourse

#80

Post by lurk2 »

sjdhshjd wrote: post #20

I’m all for human-written content. But, AI search is here. When you write for hours will it be just to have AI quote or amalgamate it, so you can have a link sit by it that few will click on? Or will you submit it to some old Yahoo-like index, HN, or peer-messaging app that reaches maybe typically 10 people typically or 100,000 once for your 15 minutes of fame? When you write something fairly long, don’t do it for th…

The big losers with AI are people who try to monetize user contributions. Users themselves were already making contributions to Reddit, StackOverflow, and Wikipedia for free. Traditional bloggers (not the Google AdWords people) wouldn’t care where you read your ideas, so long as you were reading them.

In this day and age, a blog is like music; if I can’t engage with it for free, I’m probably not going to engage with it at all.

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