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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

#81

Post by joshdavham »

I think a cool idea for future legislation may be to force social media companies like Youtube, Reddit, Instagram, X and Tiktok to allow users to easily disable machine learning-generated recommendations.

LinkedIn already has this feature and it's significantly reduced the amount of rage-inducing influencer hot takes that show up on my feed. You can also turn off your watch history to get far fewer recommendations on Youtube.

I still personally find LinkedIn and Youtube to be a net-negative on my mental health, but these settings have helped a lot.

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

#83

Post by cameldrv »

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…

Great video, but this is something lots of people have been talking about for over a decade.

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

#84

Post by jascha_eng »

gooosle wrote: post #15
ph4evers wrote: post #2

Yes totally! I like Reddit because you can pick your own subreddits but even that can be flooded by ragebait/clickbait

Most subreddits tend towards complete bubbles, where anything that goes against the prevailing opinions gets down voted into oblivion or outright deleted by mods.

Yes but at least you can choose your bubbles and not have them be chosen for you by an intransparent algorithm.

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

#85

Post by ivanjermakov »

joshdavham wrote: post #81

I think a cool idea for future legislation may be to force social media companies like Youtube, Reddit, Instagram, X and Tiktok to allow users to easily disable machine learning-generated recommendations. LinkedIn already has this feature and it's significantly reduced the amount of rage-inducing influencer hot takes that show up on my feed. You can also turn off your watch history to get far fewer recommendations on…

I find Youtube amazing when you never leave subscriptions page (excluding all clutter such as community posts and short videos), just a list of videos from creators you find entertaining.

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

#87

Post by jahewson »

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…

“The medium is the message” goes both ways though. For social media, the inverse is not just “go read a book” but the far more challenging “go write a book”. That’s just not something I’m going to do. I’m certainly not going to find a publisher, get past the gatekeepers, and find a wide enough audience to make the big chunk of time I had to devote to writing worth it.

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

#89

Post by gavmor »

grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #68
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 divisivenes…

> force social media platforms to offer support for custom feed algorithms

This sort of legislature could bankrupt a startup—and, by extension, discouragement investment—by driving them to pursue a technical achievement that's out of their league, and for potentially no reward.

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

#90

Post by alternatex »

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…

YouTube provides me the ability to block certain ads. I got an ad with Mark Walhberg asking me to pray with him. I blocked it. Now I get ads with Chris Pratt asking me to pray with him.
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