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Facebook is cooked

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Re: Facebook is cooked

#701

Post by doginasuit »

shirro wrote: post #336

The algorithm has been given a job todo. First priority on any platform is engagement and a well functioning, complete human being is not going to be engaged by rage bait and hate. They are rare, precious jewels. The shit gets dumped on people who are lonely, have a grudge, feel left out. It is relentless and escalates until their brains cook. Algorithmic social media is a massive social harm. The people who are in d…

I think it is a mistake to think about people as being helpless consumers of the algorithm. The OP's mom no doubt makes some intentional choices in her life that make a difference. It just doesn't help that the algorithm will lean into whatever will get the most engagement.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#702

Post by ben_w »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #566
bjt wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moderation and recommendation are not the same thing.

When you have a feed with a million posts in it, they are. There is no practical difference between removing something and putting it on page 5000 where no one will ever see it, or from the other side, moderating away everything you wouldn't recommend. Likewise, if you have a feed at all, it has to be in some order. Should it show everyone's posts or only people you follow? Should it show posts by popularity or somet…

While I agree "There is no intrinsic default. Everything is a choice." and "There is no practical difference between removing something and putting it on page 5000" and similar (see my own recent comments on censorship vs. propaganda):

> Should it show everyone's posts or only people you follow?

Only people (well, accounts) you follow, obviously.

That's what I always thought "following" is *for*, until it became clear that the people running the algorithms had different ideas because they collectively decided both that I must surely want to see other content I didn't ask for and also not see the content I did ask for.

> Should it show posts by popularity or something else? Is "popularity" global, regional, only among people you follow, or using some statistics based on things you yourself have previously liked?

If they want to supply a feed of "Trending in your area", IMO that would be fine, if you ask for it. Choice (user choice) is key.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#703

Post by mort96 »

carefulfungi wrote: post #680
mort96 wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why change section 230? You can just make personalized algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement illegal instead, couldn't you? What advantage does it have to mess with 230, wouldn't the result be the same in practice?

The solution must be a social one: we must culturally shun algorithmic social media, scold its proponents, and help the addicted. We aren't going to be able to turn off the AI content spigot or write laws that control media format and content and withstand (in the US) 1st amendment review. But we can change the cultural perception.

We aren't going to stop algorithmic social media through sheer force of public will without government involvement.

Social communities aren't nimble. There a ton of inertia in a social media platform. People have their whole network, all their friends, on the platform; and all friends have their friends on the platform; etc. So in order to switch from one platform to another, you need everyone to switch at the same time, which is extremely hard.

Facebook started out pretty nice. You saw what your friends posted and what pages you follow posted, in chronological order. It had privacy issues, but it worked more or less how we'd want to, with no algorithmic timeline. But they moved towards being more and more algorithmic over time. Luckily, Facebook was bad enough that it has gotten way less popular, but that has taken a long time.

Twitter is the same. It started out being the social media platform we want: you saw what your followers posted or boosted, chronologically. No algorithmic feed. But look where it is now. Thankfully, Musk's involvement has made plenty of people leave, but there were a lot of years where everyone, regardless of political leaning, were on Twitter with an algorithmic timeline. Even though a lot of people complained about the algorithmic timeline when it was introduced, they stayed on Twitter because that's where everyone they knew were.

YouTube too. For a long time, the only thing you saw on YouTube was what people you've subscribed to posted. It built up a huge community and became the de facto video sharing platform as a nice non-algorithmic site, and then they turned the key and went all in on replacing the subscription feed with the algorithmic feed. Now they've even adopted short-form video where you aren't even supposed to pick which video you wanna watch, you're just supposed to scroll. And replacing YouTube is hard due to its momentum.

So even if everyone agrees that algorithmic feeds are terrible and move to a non-algorithmic platform over the next few decades, what do you propose we do when that new platform inevitably shifts towards being an algorithmic platform? Do we start a new multi-decade long transition to yet another platform?

Re: Facebook is cooked

#704

Post by roryirvine »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #700
roryirvine wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mm, definitely. I think it's probably the cash crop that has historically been the most intertwined with politics, even more so than sugar. Central America, the Balkans, the Levant. The Iroquois and Algonquians. Cuba. The Medicis and the Stuarts. And, as you say, revolutionary Virginia and Maryland. Lots of potential there for a grand narrative covering 600 years or more! (And, to gp: yes, it absolutely did threaten…

Distinguishing between the economic and politics seems impossible—hence the term "political economy". Splitting the two was a bad decision.

Yeah, isn't it only a relatively recent split - mid 20th century, I think?

Before that, the term "economy" was only used as a synonym for thrift or a system of management or control (and "economist" tended to mean someone who wanted to reduce spending or increase restrictions on something).

Re: Facebook is cooked

#705

Post by bilekas »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #697
bilekas wrote: post #691

What's more concerning is that this is not Facebook that is cooked, it's the users who are cooked. Facebooks Algo will only do and continue what brings the most engagement. More and more we are seeing people, mostly younger it seems, be fine with Ai content filling their feeds. It's becoming normalized now so that it can continue to be monetized. Interestingly these companies once promoted 'body positivity' and now t…

If users were the problem, why does it immediately show garbage content to new users or males, with zero evidence they want it, as written by other comments here?

Because without enough usage data on the OP, then the algo will revert to what is most successful to those with the info they DO have on him.

i.e : Thirst traps and bait videos.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#706

Post by jalapenos »

jedberg wrote: post #204

> So: is this just something wacky with my algorithm? No, it's not. Once Meta identifies you as male, you will get almost exclusively thirst trap posts no matter what you do. It started about two years ago. Some other interesting points: A woman posted on reddit recently saying she noticed her son's feed was filled with this stuff, so she created her own instagram account, identified as a man, and had the same feed.…

Algorithm has discovered dudes like boobs.

More news at ten.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#707

Post by jalapenos »

arjie wrote: post #37

Huh. I thought perhaps it was the usual "why are all the recommendation algorithms showing me gay porn?" class of complaint, but I went and logged in and it seems that he's not wrong though the degree seems to vary. I've got a bunch of these but also a bunch of outrage bait and generic general stuff. I think if you don't use the platform you get the undifferentiated high-engagement stuff which is likely the same as t…

> Bay Area Gooners group

Just searched this and was not what expected

Re: Facebook is cooked

#708

Post by jalapenos »

spicyusername wrote: post #681
LarsDu88 wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets imagine you work at Coca Cola and your job is to sell soda. Soda causes diabetes and tooth decay. Don't you think that's problematic? Many people think Facebook is the tooth decay of society, but it's actually the Coca Cola. And Coca Cola makes a lot of money

Pretty big difference between soda and what's being described, unfortunately. It'd be a more accurate analogy if we replaced soda with opium. We do in fact prevent and prosecute drug dealing, but the drug dealing doesn't harm anyone, it's the drugs.

Drug dealing "harm" is the classic abject shirking of responsibly.

Oh no, I'm contacting my dealer, and now going to meet him, and handing cash to him... Oh no poor me this is being done to me by him..

Filth

Re: Facebook is cooked

#709

Post by DaedalusII »

arczyx wrote: post #568
cleandreams wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not Facebook but I have a young friend who gets her news on Epstein from tiktok. She is convinced they were eating babies. I do worry (a little) that she will go over the conspiracy theories deep end. I told her tiktok news was bad "mental hygiene" but she didn't get it.

> She is convinced they were eating babies There are indeed allegations of that, so it's not impossible. You can read it yourself here: https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA001476... > On the yacht he witnessed babies being dismembered, their intestines removed, and individuals eating the feces from these intestines

this is a member of the general public who filed a report to the FBI. it carries about as much weight as a post on 4chan. you can see the sarcastic response from the FBI officer as well

it is exactly this kind of content that is so pervasive and misleading. the FBI get thousands of reports like this every day saying that george bush is a lizard, antarctica is full of UFOs etc.

Let me use the same sentence structure as above, with another example to highlight the absurdity of it:

"a member of the general public alleged angela merkel was receiving instructions from a russian UFO scientist that had contact with an insect alien spieces in alpha centauri, so its not impossible.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#710

Post by LarsDu88 »

barrkel wrote: post #485
LarsDu88 wrote: post #442

The poster here doesn't seem to grasp how Facebook's algorithms work. He didn't use it for a very long time. The algorithm defaulted to content that appeals what little it knows about him... probably a middle aged man who hasn't clicked on facebook in a very long time. Maybe the first thing he actually did click on was a notification with a picture of an attractive young woman. If he sought out richer stuff on the pl…

I got the impression the author is female.

Have you ever noticed that magazines which target women also tend to have pictures of beautiful women on the cover? Same thing could be at play here.
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