[HN Gopher] Kill your Feeds - Stop letting algorithms dictate wh...
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Kill your Feeds - Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think
Author : tom_usher
Score : 526 points
Date : 2025-03-08 18:11 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (usher.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (usher.dev)
| ph4evers wrote:
| Yes totally! I like Reddit because you can pick your own
| subreddits but even that can be flooded by ragebait/clickbait
| gooosle wrote:
| Most subreddits tend towards complete bubbles, where anything
| that goes against the prevailing opinions gets down voted into
| oblivion or outright deleted by mods.
| jascha_eng wrote:
| Yes but at least you can choose your bubbles and not have
| them be chosen for you by an intransparent algorithm.
| allenu wrote:
| This might be obvious, but to me, it was an important
| realization that a lot of subreddits that deal with, say,
| chronic health issues, are going to skew towards people who
| have extreme conditions. People who get better aren't
| necessarily going to want to be hanging around in such
| spaces.
|
| Even subreddits that don't deal with health conditions are
| going to skew a certain way over time just as a result of who
| hangs out there all the time and who is accepted, so the
| "reality" you see in a subreddit is not necessarily the true
| reality of the greater population. (Again, this should be
| obvious, but it's easy to forget this when you start reading
| a reddit post and thinking, "I don't agree with all these
| people, but there are many people with this opinion. Should I
| be thinking more like they do?")
| icepat wrote:
| Reddit, in my opinion, is the absolute worst platform for this.
| It's incredibly easy to manipulate the appearance of consensus
| opinion. Also, the degree of power the individual moderators
| have on shaping conversations means instead of an algorithm
| choosing what you see, someone who spends up to 8 hours a day
| on Reddit chooses what you see. Lots of these moderators are
| not the sort of people who should have any place shaping
| conversations.
| ddq wrote:
| Absolutely. The known ease with which voting manipulation is
| possible and the lucrative incentives for motivated actors
| and organizations to do so, and the fundamentally flawed
| moderation structure are the two key issues that, unless they
| are radically changed, systemically compromise the integrity
| of the entire platform. This is the natural, inevitable state
| of a system such designed.
|
| I wish Aaron Swartz were still here. Such an absolute
| injustice.
| cedws wrote:
| Even so, reddit is a huge echo chamber. The moderation is
| completely opaque so if a subreddit moderator doesn't like
| something you've said they can remove it at will, and they
| often do. And the upvote system encourages groupthink. Votes
| being hidden on HN I think is excellent.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _The moderation is completely opaque so if a subreddit
| moderator doesn 't like something you've said they can remove
| it at will, and they often do._
|
| That's true of any real community in the physical world, too.
|
| I'd go as far as saying that it's _impossible_ to have fully
| inclusive and 100% objectively fair community that 's also
| interesting, or even a community. It's not how humans
| operate, it's not what they want from a community, and even
| trying to enforce this "perfection" would require infinite
| resources feeding an omnipresent bureaucracy to moderate
| perfect order and compliance into people.
| tempodox wrote:
| I can't help thinking that those receptive to the message would
| have drawn consequences long since. The feeds themselves would
| have chased them away. Can you wean a crack addict by telling
| them to stop using? Maybe, but I don't see a high probability of
| success. I sure hope I'm wrong.
| cratermoon wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1053/
| ncr100 wrote:
| Cute.
|
| Learning how to think critically, I think that's the
| intersection of this cartoon and this blog post.
| gavmor wrote:
| Sure, but it's nice to be reaffirmed, and maybe this is handy
| grist for discussions with friends, family, and colleagues.
| ncr100 wrote:
| > 5. Talk about it - if you're reading this you a already know
| this is a problem. Your friends and family may not be aware of
| how their feeds are manipulating their attention and beliefs.
| Without intervention, the radicalisation of opinions, and the
| consequences we're already seeing, will only escalate.
|
| This is not Crack fortunately.
|
| Physical dependence -> dopamine -> euphoria, escape, coping
| with stress + anxiety -> cannot feel pleasure without the drug
| -> craving for the drug / dependence. Recovery includes
| confronting the physical feeling that the drug is essential for
| perceived well-being.
|
| Psychological dependence (TikTok / Insta Feed) -> sense of
| belonging, validation, purpose -> sense of identity via
| subculture, especially for "marginalized" or "insecure"
| individuals -> (side-note, some TikTok / Insta / MAGA+Dem /
| feeds CREATE+encourage the sense of marginalization /
| insecurity) -> us versus them -> isolation, only valuing
| subculture views, promoted distorted beliefs, detachment ->
| dependence (again). Recovery includes depression, anxiety, and
| feelings of loss.
|
| WEANING
|
| - Drug: medical intervention, therapy, support, relapse
| prevention
|
| - Social: therapy, reconnection, critical thinking development,
| finding alt purpose, gradual separation
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Meanwhile we have gambling addiction that flies in the face
| of everything you're saying here.
| tempodox wrote:
| The thing is that those needs people are trying to fulfill
| with social media feeds are mostly real and legitimate. The
| problem is to find alternate, and better, sources of
| fulfillment. This is something you cannot talk into
| existence.
| MarkLowenstein wrote:
| Seems like a mode of thinking that is appearing everywhere, not
| just on social media. Go to MOD Pizza. You can order any toppings
| you want--your favorites. Yet many if not most people will go
| through the menu of preselected toppings combos to see if there's
| one they'd like. This makes no sense to me.
| Mobius01 wrote:
| It makes perfect sense in the current direction of travel -
| people are more than happy to give up their ability to choose
| and think for themselves.
| gruez wrote:
| >This makes no sense to me.
|
| see:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue
| dymk wrote:
| That... does not seem analogous. MOD isn't giving you a
| personalized set of combinations they think you'd like, with
| the top recommendations happening to include some sponsored
| ingredient. It's like every other pizza shops since the dawn of
| pizza shops: fixed toppings menu or a build-your-own option.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is easier to communicate a pre-selected option (maybe with a
| change or two) than to order from scratch sometimes.
|
| But ordering pizza and getting news have different stakes
| anyway, so I think these problems should be handled
| differently. It is reasonable to offload pizza topping
| decisions, but we should try to learn a bit about the actual
| positions/competencies of our elected officials.
| williamtrask wrote:
| Freedom of choice isn't that freeing if you don't have
| time/money to actually permute through all the options to find
| what you like.
|
| This is the actual reason why the door is continually held open
| for propaganda and centralized control. Decentralizing
| everything struggles with inefficiency problems.
|
| The first person to really discover and popularize this was
| Edward Bernays -- who invented Public Relations to help
| corporations and politicians weaponize this inefficiency. He
| kicked off the "Mad Men" of 20th century New York.
|
| The introduction to Bernays's book "Propaganda" lays this out
| very clearly:
|
| https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Bernays_Propaganda_in_en...
|
| Or if you don't like reading... another overview of Bernays is
| Adam Curtis's "Century of the Self"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
|
| We will keep giving up control to centralized forces until we
| can share information freely and efficiently about what choices
| lead to better/worse outcomes in a decentralized way.
| majormajor wrote:
| Choices take energy. If there are curated defaults it's often
| more pleasant to save that energy for something else. And most
| people don't have a sole "favorite" choice that they'd go to
| every time vs trying variety. Heck, you could even spend more
| energy on deciding whether or not to go somewhere else
| entirely.
|
| Algorithmic content feeds are a much more important battle to
| fight, but "spend more effort on every single other decision
| too" is not gonna put people in a place to want to be more
| selective. It'll tire them out more and make them more likely
| to just put on the default idiot box feed.
| cmrx64 wrote:
| The combinatorial space is huge, and when I scan through the
| _curated_ list, I expect the establishment to provide some
| options from that space that are Actually Good. Maybe something
| I wouldn't usually go for calls out to me. It's an idea
| generator.
|
| There's this concept of "babble and prune"
| (https://www.lesswrong.com/w/babble-and-prune) and I argue that
| for food (and probably most opinions...) the prune aspect is
| where your personal taste gets most expressed. So they are
| doing you a service by pre-babbling a set of options for you
| prune.
|
| Maybe this framework can shed some sense :)
|
| In other words: I'm just trying to get a good pizza, man, I'm
| not some kind of pizza artist.
| card_zero wrote:
| This reminds me of the 90s trend for applications to boast
| about their customizable user interfaces, which meant you
| could drag panels around or choose what should appear on
| which menu ... but none of them provided a _good_ user
| interface. Saying "you can make it any way you want it!"
| excused the devs from putting in any design effort.
| al_borland wrote:
| Sometimes I just want to eat some food without making 50
| decisions. I'm not a chef, I don't know what pairs well
| together. If picking my own toppings, I will end up getting a
| plain pepperoni pizza. If there is a pre-built combo that looks
| appealing, it gives me the opportunity to branch out a little
| more and maybe find something new I like.
|
| I'm happy places exist that let people be a little more
| creative, or allow me the same if I'm in the mood, but it's not
| something I want all the time. I really like places where I can
| simple order a #4 without any substitutions and my order is
| done. Growing up as a picky eater, I caught a lot of flack as a
| kid for substitutions; my orders never felt easy like other
| people. I like when my order can be easy.
| MarkLowenstein wrote:
| Interesting because I've always been the picky eater (in
| Western food) which is why ordering exactly what I like is
| especially appealing. You must have grown very weary of the
| substitution process.
| allenu wrote:
| If I'm going to MOD Pizza, I'm going because I want to eat
| something quick and easy. I'm not necessarily going there to
| maximize my pizza-eating experience. I honestly prefer picking
| something from the menu and maybe adding some extra toppings.
|
| In general, I don't personally enjoy having to make decisions
| about particular ingredients when I go somewhere to eat. It's
| mental energy I don't want to have to expend. Not having any
| dietary restrictions, I personally prefer somewhere that offers
| a fixed set of items. I'd also say that when I was younger, I
| was afraid of making the wrong choices and didn't know what
| some ingredients were whenever I'd go somewhere that did have
| choices, so that added a little bit of anxiety.
| dfee wrote:
| Currently ranked #1 on the HN feed!
| velancogito wrote:
| I would disable all short videos in the feed on every platform
| because they are completely useless but it is not possible in
| these apps.
|
| I can't remove the apps because I might need them to check
| something important or write someone, so I forced to use my
| willpower to skip these videos everyday.
| svara wrote:
| 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 reasoning.
|
| So yes, totally. Turn it off and go read a book.
| williamtrask wrote:
| > So yes, totally. Turn it off and go read a book.
|
| For what its worth, 500 years ago people were just as worried
| about books as we are today about newsfeeds. But it took a long
| time for books to ultimately decentralize enough to become a
| more egalitarian, community knowledge. But even that's not
| entirely the case now. Books can be propaganda just like
| everything else.
| svara wrote:
| Books can be terrible, but they can be good to a level that
| (most popular) social media can't, due to the limitations of
| the medium.
|
| Without long text, to a good approximation, you just can't
| convey long, multi-step reasoning chains at the limit of
| human intellectual capacity.
|
| Personally I've started reading again much more recently, and
| it's done wonders for what's going on inside my head. I was
| feeling so dull! I can only recommend it.
| lawn wrote:
| It's also common to think that you should only read non-
| fiction and that fiction is a waste of time, but I
| absolutely don't agree. Fiction is amazing and it'll help
| your reasoning, creativity, helps give perspective on
| things, and improves your outlook on life in a way that
| non-fiction has a very hard time to do.
|
| Non-fiction is very good for other reasons and it's good to
| aim for a healthy mix of the too I think.
| epoxia wrote:
| I agree, but struggle to find fiction books to read. Most
| of my reading just consists of a historical period /
| event that I find interesting and read more about. From
| that I sometimes come across an "alternate history" type
| fiction book, but not much else. What do you do for
| discovery?
| pharrington wrote:
| The problems with social media aren't its capacity or
| limitations - it absolutely can be _at least_ as good as
| books for long-term, coherent narrative building and
| multistep reasoning. The problems are the incentives
| against using social media for fostering and sharing deep
| experiences and thought. Hundreds of billions of dollars
| are spent yearly promoting disposable, reactionary content,
| at the expense of robust, complex work that 's risky to
| create and takes time to engage with. The moneymen want the
| money _now_ , their future selves and their own children be
| damned.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Books can be propaganda, certainly. However, books promote
| long attention span. Social media generally removes that
| aspect and focuses on dopamine hits. It's hard to condition
| critical thinking when jumping from one truth sentence to
| another truth sentence without context.
| jasonb05 wrote:
| You can brainwash yourself with some wild sh*t if you spend
| too long in the wrong heads/books.
|
| "Go consume this form-factor because it's better" has
| always bothered me.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| No doubt. However, I didn't focus on any of that. It's
| also not the premise of the article. The premise of the
| article is "don't remain in your echo chamber, don't
| trust just because it fits your narrative, step out and
| confront the world".
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Yeah. Just as an exhibit every radicalized leftist
| "reading theory". Whoo boy talk about epistemic closure.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| Just because before people had a concern and were wrong,
| doesn't mean if we have the same concern now we'll be wrong
| again.
| visarga wrote:
| I think the opposite, just like we used to tell people to
| "go read a book", now we'll tell people to "spend some time
| with an AI" to get cultured. The more AI time the better
| for your education.
| luqtas wrote:
| it's cheaper (2025) and more reliable to recommend
| someone surf Wikipedia than "getting cultered with AI"
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I don't think "go read a book" has really generalized in
| this way
|
| "Go Read a book" was really meant to be synonymous with
| "Go educate yourself"
|
| No one really says "Go read a blog" or "Go read your
| facebook feed" the same way, at least as far as I know.
|
| I sure hope "go spend more time on social media" or "go
| talk to an AI" never becomes synonymous with "educate
| yourself". I shudder at the thought
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| If someone told me to "spend some time with an AI" I just
| wouldn't spend any more time with that person. What a
| nightmare.
| jasonb05 wrote:
| My kids read plenty and I am indeed always telling them
| to "go talk to the LLM". It's more work than reading (I
| suspect), they have to engage more with the topic - ask
| good questions.
| dgfitz wrote:
| I don't even let my kids watch YouTube. Imagine what an
| llm could hallucinate to impressionable minds.
|
| Edit (addition):
|
| How the fuck did we decide that a large language model
| somehow became artificial intelligence? It's like
| claiming a dictionary is intelligent. I just don't get
| it.
| miohtama wrote:
| > The Licensing of the Press Act 1662 (14 Cha. 2. c. 33) was
| an act of the Parliament of England with the long title An
| Act for preventing the frequent Abuses in printing seditious
| treasonable and unlicensed Books and Pamphlets and for
| regulating of Printing and Printing Presses.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_1.
| ..
| ncr100 wrote:
| I somewhat differ:
|
| The feed's >contents< are the message. And >the feed< is easily
| abused by content providers who have a PROFIT (Ferengi!)
| motive.
|
| BUT I agree that The Feed is tightly intertwined with The
| Message. It is the enabler for HUGE audience capture. Versus
| the much smaller old-school audience capture of cult-psychology
| tactics.
| timewizard wrote:
| 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 existential terms, no jingoistic propaganda
| trying to influence me.
|
| It's like what it was meant to be 20 years ago. Why do people
| not do this?
| richie_adler wrote:
| 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.)
| chasd00 wrote:
| There are some people you just can't reach. The people who
| won't manage their media feeds will never "read a book".
| It's like asking people to stop eating junk food, some just
| won't even if it's making them miserable.
| alternatex wrote:
| 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.
| jahewson wrote:
| "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.
| deadbabe wrote:
| _Write_ a book, that doesn't mean sell and mass market a
| book.
|
| It's like keeping a blog on the internet no one reads.
| Liberating.
| sien wrote:
| Anyone can write a book now that is available to hundreds of
| millions people. The gatekeepers can no longer stop you.
|
| However, as you say, writing something good enough and with a
| big enough audience is very hard.
| ddq wrote:
| I highly recommend reading Marshal McLuhan's book Understanding
| Media: The Extensions of Man from which that phrase originates
| (and not just a Wikipedia summary, different medium after all!)
| ndm000 wrote:
| There is a comment in the intro of that book about the
| pinnacle of human labor being the simulation of
| consciousness. Very prescient for being written in the 60s.
| mlekoszek wrote:
| And as a follow-up, Lewis Mumford, _Technics and
| Civilization_.
|
| Where McLuhan argues technologies shape worldviews, Mumford
| argues worldviews also shape technologies.
|
| And then perhaps into the world of science and technology
| studies (STS), where these questions are explored more
| deeply, and specific cases are examined.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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 it!
| tom_usher wrote:
| I was definitely influenced to write this by Alec's excellent
| video which I recommend everyone watch.
|
| I'd hoped it would be a way to share my own opinions on it,
| summarise my own personal concerns, as well as adding my own
| recommendations - but totally appreciate if you feel it is
| derivative, and I appreciate the call out. As a big Technology
| Connections fan I certainly don't intend to steal his work.
|
| It's also intended as something you can link to your friends
| and family that might be a little more digestible than a 30
| minute video.
| pseudosaid wrote:
| sharing similar ideas is never stealing. Your vantage point
| is unique and everyone should be espousing their take on the
| lack of agency running our lives these days.
| jasode wrote:
| _> by Alec's excellent video which I recommend everyone
| watch._
|
| I get what your advice is about but to add some nuance which
| didn't cover... you should consider that I learned of Alec's
| Technology Connections channel 9 years ago because _the
| Youtube algorithm suggested it to me_.
|
| Why did Youtube do that? It was because I had watched Ben's
| Applied Science excellent video showing vinyl grooves under
| an electron microscope:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuCdsyCWmt8
|
| So the first Alec video I got exposed to was his _related
| topic_ on vinyl records (click "Oldest" to see them) :
| https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections/videos
|
| I'd argue that the Youtube algorithm is very good at _finding
| adjacent videos of interest_ especially in educational topics
| and DIY repair tutorials.
|
| You're suggesting people go to Youtube subscriptions feeds
| but people have a list of favorites in their subscriptions
| _often because of the algorithm._ There 's a bit of chicken-
| vs-egg situation going on there.
|
| What a good algorithm does is help users with the Explore-vs-
| Exploit tradeoff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration%E
| 2%80%93exploitati...
|
| - Explore --> Youtube algorithm sidebar recommendations of
| related videos.
|
| - Exploit --> add a worthy creator to subscription feed and
| get alerted to new releases from that person
|
| The "explore" part is helped by algorithms because they can
| suggest videos you would have never thought of because you
| don't know the keywords or jargon to type into a Youtube
| search box to get to it directly. _" You don't know what you
| don't know."_
|
| But don't use the algorithm for politics or click on anything
| that has a thumbnail with the shocked Pikachu face. That just
| starts a feedback loop of crap.
|
| Arguably, the algorithms could put one into a non-productive
| engagement loop never to escape. Personally, I don't think
| it's a big risk for educational/DIY topics because your brain
| gets saturated with "too much information" and hits a
| stopping point where you don't want to learn any more.
|
| So... Algorithms can be bad ... but you can also make them
| work for you.
| pests wrote:
| I agree with you almost completely. I never used YT as a
| content source until a few years ago - I'd never open the
| app and only watch videos linked or embedded / looking up a
| specific how to video. Now it's different though.
|
| I never go to my subscription feed - the front page algo
| keeps me up to date on any new content from people I want
| to see updates on. I've noticed too it almost has a "shadow
| subscription" where even though I am not subscribed to
| certain channels, it knows I watch every video by them so
| it gets on my front page too.
|
| The front page really has a "vibe" that follows my
| interests around. Watch a few too many Minecraft videos or
| car repair and soon you start seeing more and more of the
| front page being those topics. Get a new interest in
| pyramids? Devlogs? Nature? The front page slowly decays old
| interests and promotes new ones.
|
| Which is again why I don't check my sub feed - it's a
| graveyard of interests, many of which I don't care about
| right now. The algo surfaces the ones I do.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Watch a few too many Minecraft videos or car repair and
| soon you start seeing more and more
|
| In my experience it's "watch one video outside of your
| recommendations and then half your next set of
| recommendations will be related to that". I'm scared to
| click on anything I'm not already subscribed to for fear
| of trashing the home page.
| gtirloni wrote:
| You can (almost) always tell you're not interested in
| those videos and it slowly stops suggesting them. You can
| also ask it to never recommend a certain channel.
| TylerE wrote:
| You can't, however stop it from suggestion huge blocks of
| shorts or crappy free to play games.
| dmd wrote:
| You somehow must be able to, as everyone I know has feeds
| full of that sort of thing, and I've never seen even one
| short or game on my youtube home page.
| squigz wrote:
| Yes you can, with something like uBlock Origin, or even a
| simple stylesheet override.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| Youtube disrespects any person that is multilingual. They
| shove AI translations into our faces because the content
| creator is responsible for disabling it not the user.
| Instead of German videos I get German videos with English
| AI audio. I keep getting videos from the same game I
| always ignore or say not interested on my front page.
|
| Youtube wants my money. They will never get my money when
| they come up with things like that. I will give them my
| money once they start cracking down on ads. And by that I
| mean actual moderated ads - not random ads with porn. As
| long as they serve scam ads I will never give them money
| - and it does not look like I will in my lifetime.
| tom_usher wrote:
| Thanks, this is an important nuance. Recommendation
| algorithms are absolutely useful, and if you're so inclined
| you can absolutely make them work for you, but this is
| about making educated, conscious decisions about what you
| click next in your 'Related videos' section.
|
| Algorithmic feeds don't give us that opportunity - they're
| designed to require minimal effort and to keep the dopamine
| coming without any conscious decisions.
| alpinisme wrote:
| One point to observe here is that there's a difference
| between a "related content" section when viewing specific
| content and the more general algorithmic feed that is
| designed to be the primary mode of discovery and
| interaction.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Yeah, pro/anti "algorithms" is too reductive, especially
| since the old status-quo was also an algorithm of people
| and processes.
|
| I'd rather use a lens more like all the open-source/free-
| software concerns about controlling your own computer:
|
| 1. Can I see how the recommendation algorithm is intended
| to work? The site-owner says it works for my benefit, but
| what if they're mistaken, or lying?
|
| 2. What has it recorded about my interests, and how can I
| fix bad records that don't represent them?
|
| 3. When it's not working well--or harmfully exploiting my
| baser weaknesses--how can I change to a different one?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Kind of comes down to one of Neil Postman's questions
|
| "Whose problem is it that it solves?"
|
| It's possible to get some benefit from an
| algorithm/process, just as a side effect, that was never
| designed to work in your interest and is an opaque cloud
| service. Maybe the service is solving the network owner's
| problem of selling you to advertisers. If you want to
| maximise for "interest and relevance to my life goals"
| there's nothing to stop you running your own "algorithm"
| of course, except any obstacles put in your way by the
| data network owner. For that reason it's more important
| to pay attention to the freedom of the network (open API,
| federated, maximally distributed etc) than the algorithms
| that run on it. If you control the former you control the
| latter. HN (the network) seems to allow a lot from the
| plethora of viewers I've seen.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| This seems like the perfect place to once again recommend
| "Amusing Ourselves To Death" :-)
|
| I also read "Technopoly" recently, and while it didn't
| have quite the same impact on me, I can't deny that it
| accurately describes the techno-political moment we're
| currently living in. Well worth the time.
| harrall wrote:
| I dislike any politics or clickbait too and it doesn't come
| back.
|
| I have no complaints about my Instagram and YouTube feeds.
| They give good recommendations.
| xenophonf wrote:
| You're basically training their advertising model for
| them, so yay for the Algorithm, I guess.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| > I dislike any politics
|
| TikTok in particular sneaks politics into everything.
| Even if it's not explicitly political.
|
| I asked Deepseek once to walk me through what it knows
| about TikTok and it claimed the Chinese version uses an
| RL approach to sprinkle socialist core values into your
| feed even if you explicitly don't want politics. It also
| claimed TikTok absolutely promises it doesn't do this in
| the US. I'm not really convinced Deepseek knows what it's
| talking about but it was pretty plausible technically.
|
| But in practice it's easy to tell if someone even in the
| US spends a lot of time on TikTok base on their strongly
| held opinions even when they explicitly say they never
| watch political content.
|
| I doubt other social media companies do this because they
| aren't created specifically for political propaganda like
| TikTok is, but it's possible they do.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| > Personally, I don't think it's a big risk for
| educational/DIY topics because your brain gets saturated
| with "too much information" and hits a stopping point where
| you don't want to learn any more.
|
| This may also be an artifact of the fact that you are the
| sort of person who seeks out educational content. I.e. you
| have a high need for intellectual stimulation. That makes
| you an outlier among all people who use social media.
|
| Personally I think technical people underestimate the
| negative impacts of the models that drive the algorithms.
| We are basically training humans via a reward function that
| maximizes watch time. We are also heavily correlating
| errors in knowledge because popular stuff gets boosted so
| much. Correlated errors are bad for rubustness.
| bryant wrote:
| Can you just link the video at the very top and indicate in
| the first paragraph that you were directly inspired by the
| video? It's only fair.
| zdw wrote:
| This video is overall better in terms of emphasis, and goes
| into how to use tools available to intentionally curate the
| media that you choose to consume as a primary method, rather
| than it being hidden in a list.
| hooverd wrote:
| Technology connections is great. I've never been more excited
| to listen to a man talk about dishwashers for 20 minutes.
| Xiol32 wrote:
| Still can't find powder where I am. It's all tabs. I need
| that prewash, dammit!
| atonse wrote:
| 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.
| AndyKelley wrote:
| I'm sure Alec would celebrate that his ideology, which is also
| not original, is spreading.
| nerevarthelame wrote:
| Alec also cited this video as at least a partial motivator for
| his video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNOol5OTasw
|
| It focuses on the harmful nature of infinitely scrolling
| content. Cutting out all infinite scrolling apps has had a
| hugely positive effect on my productivity and mental health.
| latexr wrote:
| How does HN fit into that? I'm not trying to be cheeky, I'm
| genuinely interested, HN is technically an infinite website
| (though you do have to click "More") yet you're here.
|
| Do you use the noprocrast settings? Does HN just fit
| differently into your brain? Something else?
| atrus wrote:
| There's a bit of a mental difference between being able to
| (literally) endlessly swipe up to the next tiktok vs having
| to click the next button on hn though.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Definitely, but as you said, it's only a bit.
|
| Things like hn or old.reddit still carry most if not all
| of the negative effects of infinite feeds.
|
| What I would give credit to hn for is that being text
| only, it forces you at least to think a bit and not
| blindly consume a video for example.
| doubled112 wrote:
| On HN, at least, once I get a few pages in I usually
| realize I'm just seeing articles from a few hours/days
| ago. I know then it is time to take a break.
|
| It isn't infinite the same way TikTok will or YouTube
| used to keep playing something you haven't seen yet.
| cameldrv wrote:
| Great video, but this is something lots of people have been
| talking about for over a decade.
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| Since they already reference Technology Connections in the
| article, and since this is a great essay but not new ideas,
| let's also call out other important voices - in particular
| Shoshana Zuboff's "Surveillance Capitalism", Cory Doctorow, and
| the many others who have put their backs into helping us
| understand how these sick systems work.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Thanks! I immediately thought of the TC video when I saw the
| title, and wondered if there was a point to the article beyond
| the video.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| There will always be something dictating what you think until you
| really feel interested in actually thinking yourself and develop
| a critical and exploratory mindset. The active audience of this
| website probably is predominantly blessed with having this kind
| of mindset already but the general population probably lacks any
| incentive for developing it.
| asadotzler wrote:
| The general population figures out all kinds of complex things
| and loves it when tech provides solutions to those
| complexities. Commercials suck and Tivo flew off the shelves in
| part because of 30 second skip. Half of browser users have an
| ad blocker. No one was handed these by their Big Tech
| overlords, they sought them out and used them to fix their
| "feeds". Give people some credit that if we make good tools
| available, they'll avail themselves of those. The active
| audience of this website is probably capable of building some
| of those. So, get to it instead of lamenting the fall.
| gavmor wrote:
| Glad to see Bluesky mentioned. I look forward to trading custom
| feed algorithms like Pokemon:
| https://stronglytyped.uk/articles/bluesky-firehose-meet-hack...
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| 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).
| gavmor wrote:
| > 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.
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| Social stability is far more valuable than any social media
| business. But yes regulatory capture will need to be
| managed.
| gavmor wrote:
| > Social stability is far more valuable than any social
| media business
|
| In an ever-changing universe, how can we have social
| stability without innovation?
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| Stable systems are not static, they are just sufficiently
| damped that they don't oscillate uncontrollably [1].
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damping
| gavmor wrote:
| I've a rudimentary familiarity with control systems, yes.
| Glad we're on the way same page!
|
| I'm not satisfied with your response, but I'm losing my
| grasp on the analogy.
|
| What are we dampening? Inertia, no? Imparted by the
| environment, and/or our own (fundamentally, inevitably)
| inaccurate thrust vectors?
|
| It's a metaphor, so I guess we can only argue about the
| level of abstraction at which to apply it. I'm certainly
| glad I don't need to mutate and grow new internal organs
| just to cross the street, but I can be grateful for the
| mutation and growth of an ability to synthesize Vitamin D
| which allowed my ancestors to cross glaciers--two
| activities which are, arguably, helpful in maintaining
| homeostasis.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| I think you might want to read up on the history of Japan
| post Warring States, to learn what happens when you
| priveledge "social stability" over innovation.
| visarga wrote:
| You don't need legal solutions for something that technology
| can fix. Agents can gather, filter, rank, and display
| information in a way that works for you. Gatekeepers control
| both the information and the interface, but agents take that
| control back--especially local agents, which offer privacy
| and freedom from restrictive oversight. LLMs can adapt
| endlessly in how they present information. There's no need to
| disconnect entirely or remain at the mercy of tech companies.
| I suspect advertising is headed for a rough patch soon, as
| agents will slice through spam and ads.
| ddq wrote:
| Unfortunately, the Bluesky Discover feed is utterly garbage,
| seemingly insistent on pushing political content, especially of
| the resistlib variety, no matter how many times I give "not
| interested" feedback. It's essentially the mirror version of
| the twitter For You algorithm; less overtly heinous but still a
| deeply unhealthy engagement trap. You definitely have to use
| custom feeds and the other features, but the most prominent and
| easiest point of entry for new users is a drip feed of
| ragebait.
| gavmor wrote:
| > the Bluesky Discover feed
|
| I know nothing about it, because exclusively use custom and
| niche feeds!
| letmeinhere wrote:
| This advice is missing something crucial which is how to discover
| new creators sans feeds. Not saying it's impossible, but it's
| something they excel at and they've extinguished a lot of the old
| ways.
| tom_usher wrote:
| Great point. I'm personally trying linkblogging and following
| other link blogs inspired by Simon Willison [1].
|
| The more people that do this the more we can start rebuilding
| networks of people we trust and still retain control over the
| diversity of our sources.
|
| 1: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/22/link-blog/
| otter_is_fine wrote:
| Yeah this is super key. I think it's still possible to
| highlight new creators without algos, one way is to just
| involve more (only) humans in the process. This is what we're
| doing at Twigg, effectively letting users decide what gets
| highlighted and elevated to the rest of our members. - Too
| early to say how it'll play out, but it seems to be working
| well soo far...
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I'm surprised there is never more acknowledgement of this. Just
| look around at the other people you see in public. If they aren't
| actively walking, the phone is out, sometimes even while walking.
| You can't really think deeply about your life and situation if
| every waking second is spent looking at brainrot social media.
| Even people with a nose buried in a book are trading precious
| time in their own mind developing their own thoughts for that to
| instead be filled with others words and ideas.
|
| Socrates was even complaining about this, and it's arguably far
| worse what is happening today than what he was seeing.
| outer_web wrote:
| So while there is plenty of viral brainrot media out there,
| reading substantive material that promotes understanding or
| introspection looks almost the same. And it's more profound
| than what I'd be thinking about in the dentist waiting room or
| long hardware store line.
| lysace wrote:
| 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
| do take a break, I see that the other side "wins" to a noticeably
| larger degree. Again, small country.
| ncr100 wrote:
| It's fascinating, and being "The Subject" of the fascination
| and never truly "Objective" is a particular conundrum! Good
| luck with the "unfortunately" aspect -- totally possible to
| stop. (sexual humor warning: https://imgur.com/dont-touch-
| girls-m0Qk8)
|
| I think it's part of being human.
|
| I invite a brain specialist to step in here and comment which
| regions of the brain compelled us to agree with those whom we
| also feel we "need".
|
| EDIT: .. cut to ncr100 proceeding to open youtube.com ...
| stego-tech wrote:
| 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 some reason),
| who has found value in this discourse and is trying to get more
| or better perspectives. _That_ is someone you can convince of
| your position.
|
| It's been a lot easier to engage in text discourse ever since I
| had that epiphany, because instead of taking every bait and
| trying to correct every wrong, I'm only engaging with folks
| arguing with data, with perspective, with good faith more often
| than not. _That_ leads to better outcomes, I believe, instead
| of just contributing to so much _noise_.
| thuanao wrote:
| Huh that's a perspective I hadn't thought about before.
| Thanks for sharing.
| richie_adler wrote:
| Very positive attitude. Beware the sealions, but keep up!
| heavensteeth wrote:
| I try to keep a few things in mind whenever I'm arguing with
| somebody that I think are helpful (hopefully):
|
| 1. Most arguments come down to defining words, even if you
| may not realise it.
|
| 2. Don't follow rabbitholes. Don't deviate from arguing your
| core premise.
|
| 3. You're not trying to prove the other person wrong, you're
| trying to find the truth.
|
| On #1 for example; I watched a video of a conservative
| arguing liberals (or something) about a few premises,
| including "gay marriage does not exist". It was immediately
| clear to me, but apparently not to the people in the video,
| that this guy has a different definition of "marriage" to me.
| That's the breadth of the disagreement. That's all people
| should've argued with him about. But not one person did. Even
| when he described his definition of marriage, and how his
| premise comes about from that definition, everybody
| immediately became sidetracked. There's just no chance of
| finding common ground behaving like that.
| lysace wrote:
| In the case of Reddit:
|
| 4. It's not that unlikely that you are arguing with an
| actual child who has picked up enough terminology to be
| dangerous but completely lacks any deeper understanding.
| crims0n wrote:
| There is a book for this, aptly titled "You Should Quit
| Reddit". It got me to quit, highly recommend it.
| lysace wrote:
| CliffsNotes (ish):
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/nosurf/comments/1693ky4/you_should_.
| ..
| ddq wrote:
| I would love to completely cut reddit out of my life but
| would enjoy a smaller, more positive alternative that aims to
| provide the benefits of reddit when it was at its best but
| without the inherent flaws of the system's design and the
| dark patterns it is now known to encourage. I'm a bit put off
| by lemmy from my initial, cursory glance for a variety of
| reasons, but maybe I'm just using it wrong. Would love to
| hear suggestions that people have used for an extended time
| and would personally vouch for.
| fph wrote:
| Browse individual subreddits, in this way you avoid most of
| 'the algorithm'.
| nisalperi wrote:
| I disabled my YouTube watch history and installed Unhook.
| Combined, this essentially hides all recommendations, shorts,
| etc. I had tried blocking YouTube completely in the past, but
| it's a genuinely useful tool for learning and work. The new
| approach still lets me pull information while shielding me from
| the endless rabbitholes and passive consumption.
|
| I feel so much freer!
| trescenzi wrote:
| For me peak internet was mid 2000s StumbleUpon. Finding random
| sites at the click of a button lightly sorted by theme. One major
| difference was people weren't competing to get the most views. Of
| course monetized sites wanted more but today's feeds create a
| sort of homogeneity I find less interesting because people are
| trying to appease an algorithm not viewers.
| susam wrote:
| While this isn't at all like StumbleUpon, I've been enjoying a
| similar sense of discovery by adding
| https://indieblog.page/random as a bookmark to my web browser.
| Whenever I have some spare time and feel like _surfing_ the web
| the old-fashioned way, I click this bookmark and get a random
| post from an independent blog. It 's definitely a refreshing
| and much calmer experience compared to the black-box-algorithm-
| driven feeds of mainstream social media.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Try https://wiby.me/surprise
|
| A lot of the sites there are pre-2020 era but some weird and
| wonderful stuff!
| Exuma wrote:
| Why do people really need to be told this? This is fundamentally
| obvious at the most extreme basic of levels. It's as obvious as a
| red cube being red.
| bravoetch wrote:
| I will extend your analogy, and offer than many people do not
| understand why a red cube came to be red, and why it might be a
| bad thing.
|
| Suggest to someone that they turn off their phone and leave it
| at home, and watch them have an almost painful physical
| reaction.
| snappr021 wrote:
| What if our primary feed is HN?
| bravoetch wrote:
| Then you will digest what ycombinator wants for you.
| righthand wrote:
| Cut the cord but for infinite-scroll addiction.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I suggested a few years ago an alternative business model for
| platforms[1]. Rather than selling ads, sell people the ability to
| filter. Buy some in-platform filtration either from a provider or
| from another user of the platform. It had been a particularly
| frustrating day.
|
| [1] https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| In a lot of ways I really like recommendation algorithms,
| regularly I've had youtube recommend a video that's converted
| into new sub (eg. LiamTronix and his electric tractor
| conversion).
|
| What we really need is "responsible" recommendation systems (that
| allow the joy of discovery while aggressively damping rage bait
| and extreme view points). They'd need to be trained with some
| kind of socially beneficial reward function rather than pure
| engagement or advertiser dollars.
|
| Could such a recommendation systems operate on top of existing
| social graphs?
| YZF wrote:
| Maybe we need a client side rather than server side
| recommendation system. I.e. one that's under our control.
| dharmab wrote:
| Isn't this the concept behind BlueSkye?
| https://docs.bsky.app/docs/starter-templates/custom-feeds
| Scion9066 wrote:
| Bluesky feeds are still server-side (due to needing to
| process all of the available posts to generate the feed)
| but at least you can choose which ones to use and people
| can make their own, which is an improvement over a single
| app-provided algorithmic feed.
| mikrl wrote:
| 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.
| ein0p wrote:
| It's ironic that we're discovering this article from a feed.
| Sorry to tell you folks, but there's no defense against FOMO
| other than willpower. And the willpower is currently in short
| supply.
| nfriedly wrote:
| 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.
| mifydev wrote:
| I've been thinking about this, to get rid of feeds I need
| something that will allow me to find posts and videos via related
| keywords. I want to be able to search for information by myself,
| but in this time, I need to be able to do it at scale. AI Agents
| that do research for me is a step in the right direction. Also, I
| think the platforms would resist this by trying to gatekeep
| information by all means necessary.
| asadotzler wrote:
| I regularly use Twitter's search function with "latest" reverse
| chrono results, to follow topics without following people, and
| it works fine. I have a few bookmarked to save the typing and
| adjust the searches occasionally to refine them, minusing out
| some word or person, or adding another term to drill in (see
| advanced search for a decent set of options.)
|
| My point is, search still works. We don't have to take their
| feed, or even the feed we create following people. We can just
| search that shit out. And search results bookmarks in a folder
| work great for managing that.
| xg15 wrote:
| This article that I discovered because it was at the top of HN's
| frontpage is really telling it like it is!
| gorbachev wrote:
| I've been thinking about an ideal "algorithm" for myself.
|
| I read a lot of online content, from all kinds of sources.
| Different types of content: short-form, long-form, memes, WaPo
| editorials, sports, politics, tech, stuff, weird stuff, off-beat,
| serious, rants, opinions, facts.
|
| The most delightful experiences I've had is when something
| totally random pops in from someplace. It could come from
| anywhere, but I've noticed that the best surprises come from
| places like longreads.com, which collect good writing across a
| diverse set topics and sources. Pretty much all social platforms
| do a horrible job at this, and recommend content that is so
| similar to content I've already consumed that the additional
| value of that content is extremely low, often even negative.
|
| I think the ideal algorithm for me would be randomly suggestions
| after filtering out the garbage. No ads disguised as journalism,
| no influencer content, no clickbait, no spam, no AI slop, etc. I
| would jump on a platform that does this immediately. Even better,
| if the platform allowed me to control the knobs on what I
| consider to be garbage and not garbage.
| lostlogin wrote:
| HN does this for me.
| joshdavham wrote:
| 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.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| 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.
| almogo wrote:
| And contrawise, if you exclusively watch what "the algorithm"
| feeds you, you'll find yourself drowning in brainrot fairly
| quickly.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| I found it helpful to create friction between you and algorithms,
| such as uBlock filter that blocks feed page and suggested videos
| panel. Harder to do so for apps, but Apple's screen time limits
| is a good place to start.
| dearing wrote:
| Without online advertising most of the drivel would disappear.
|
| There will still be communities and fringe opinion and that is
| healthy. You won't have content generated just to push
| advertisements alone which is not.
| linuxhansl wrote:
| This!
|
| Turned off "Discover" on my Android phone. Was weird first. I
| felt like I might miss out on something, some important bit of
| information. "Sometimes it does show me interested things" I
| thought. And, true, sometimes I get shown a scientific article
| that would missed otherwise.
|
| But just like when I deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts
| years back, I did not miss any important event.
| callumprentice wrote:
| I've turned off all my social media feeds and use Tapestry now
| which presents posts from some of them in pure chronological
| order. This include this site, Bluesky, RSS feeds, YouTube and
| more. I am enjoying it a lot.
|
| I no longer see Facebook, Instagram or X and I'm okay with that.
| burgerrito wrote:
| Is this what you're talking about?: https://usetapestry.com/
| callumprentice wrote:
| Yes that's the one.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| I love the irony of this being #1 on the HN feed.
| jeremyt wrote:
| I have just recently launched (last week) A side project which
| helps people block (via dns) social media on a schedule.
|
| https://scrolldaddy.app
|
| If you don't have the ability to alter your feeds, taking a break
| from them is the next best thing.
| crystal_revenge wrote:
| I remember years ago someone talking about the idea of "open
| algorithms" in the sense that for any given platform the sort
| algorithm itself could theoretically be made available for users
| to submit and share their own custom sorting implementations. A
| company could just release some DSL of config setup that would
| make it possible to tweak your own feed. Even if this was tricky,
| you can image users that were more technical creating algorithms
| that other users could apply.
|
| I understand why this never happened (algorithms are, after all,
| optimized to the benefit of the company, not the user), but still
| it's a shame that this was never explored (at least not to my
| knowledge).
| martythemaniak wrote:
| Bluesky is pretty much that?
| crabmusket wrote:
| Yes and no. One of Bluesky's goals was enabling custom feeds,
| and they're definitely working on the app. I really enjoy the
| Quiet Posters feed.
|
| On the other hand, making a custom feed involves hosting your
| own server, not writing config in Bluesky itself:
| https://docs.bsky.app/docs/starter-templates/custom-feeds
| corytheboyd wrote:
| I think the whole custom sort DSL is swinging the pendulum back
| a bit too hard. People just want a deterministic sort, with no
| injected ads or hate-bait, from exactly the people they follow,
| with the ability to apply basic filters on top of that. You
| know, the old default, the one that was designed to be useful,
| not to extract maximum ad dollars from people's eyeballs with
| vacuum tubes.
| sega_sai wrote:
| I honestly think that platforms that are large enough should
| either not have algorithmic feeds at all, or have a public
| algorithm for it.
| r0p3 wrote:
| For the past year or so I've only been watching YouTube in
| private browser windows to avoid getting too stuck in an algo
| niche. Sometimes I'll have the window open for a few days at a
| time and build up different interests in the recommendations.
| Eventually either an unplanned restart or intentionally closing
| the window makes me start from scratch.
|
| Its especially interesting recently as Youtube encourages you to
| search for something before giving you recommendations, so you
| get to "seed" your session with topics you like. If nothing comes
| to mind I'll just start with Practical Engineering and go from
| there.
|
| The only downside is that I can't "like" content to help the
| creators, since I'm not logged in
| intrasight wrote:
| YouTube for me as a search results never a destination. And my
| search browser is anonymous. It clears all data when I exit. If
| I could "like" content without logging in I would - but I
| can't.
| __alexander wrote:
| I enjoy YouTube but the algorithms get a little crazy after a
| while. I solve this be deleting my history every month. The
| algorithm then falls back to channels that I subscribe to or
| similar channels.
| haswell wrote:
| I don't think most people would willingly allow someone to
| implant an electrode into their brains that could influence what
| they think with the world's largest corporations pushing the
| button on the other end.
|
| It sounds too invasive. To violating. Too extreme. Too much power
| in the hands of the button holder.
|
| But this is effectively what we're doing with our phones and
| watches in particular. It's one of the reasons I've disabled
| notifications on almost everything.
|
| The electrodes aren't necessary.
| kevo1ution wrote:
| disabling history on YouTube disables short feeds and
| recommendations on the home page. It takes 10 seconds and has
| saved easily thousands of hours and mental sanity.
|
| Also, if you ever want to revisit a video, just use chromes
| history, but you'll find also this rarely happens if ever.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Maybe just don't use social media in general. I do have an X
| account which I want to delete. Other than that I don't have FB,
| Instagram, Tiktok or anything similar.
|
| Social media is a cancer. It only benefits those who have the
| money to power the algorithms.
| allenu wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment that algorithms do affect what we see
| in our feeds and often the things we see are chosen because they
| are deemed more engaging by said algorithm, but I also think
| we're overstating the effects of the algorithms and putting too
| much blame on them. I think we need to recognize that the
| technology we've built is inherently addictive and also making
| human connections more impersonal.
|
| If you took away the algorithms, I don't think you'd necessarily
| have a relaxing social media feed. You'd still have people
| sharing so-called "engaging" material and you'd still have to
| deal with "context collapse" and disagreeable discussions. I
| think the anonymous nature of online connections inherently make
| them more impersonal compared with actual face to face ones. And
| being constantly connected to other human beings digitally (even
| strangers) is incredibly addictive.
| OisinMoran wrote:
| I've actually been working on something tackling exactly this for
| a little while now. It's a social network where you post to your
| own curated tags, and people can follow any subset of those. So
| you can post both your "local small town history" and also
| "important cs papers", and those interested in either or both can
| follow as they choose. It's alts by default. And to start, it's
| focused on links.
|
| Reverse chronological is sacrosanct and it will always remain ad
| free to keep incentives aligned with it being a place I like to
| spend time. Every tag also has its own RSS feed.
|
| It's still invite-only, but anyone reading this page is obviously
| a great fit so here's an invite link:
| https://lynkmi.com/accounts/signup/?invite_code=333ee833-e3d...
| tmoravec wrote:
| The basic idea with tags sounds very similar to Reddit.
| Especially with the initial focus on links. Reddit has
| degenerated into something a bit different, however. Why would
| your app stay true to the original concept in the face of
| scaling and financial pressure?
| ge96 wrote:
| It is interesting to see what platforms are on what side. While I
| left Reddit, Imgur is a place I go every now and then.
| zippyman55 wrote:
| I collected all my URLs I visited and organized them into a few
| groups: daily, weekly, monthly. Then sent that to a LLM
| requesting creation of files for generating bookmark tabs for my
| browser. After import, I have a well organized personal data feed
| to cycle thru in an efficient manner. I review daily material
| once; weekly periodically. This helps me limit excessive
| scrolling.
| kazinator wrote:
| First, stop letting what you read dictate what you think,
| regardless of how the material was selected.
| j3s wrote:
| "we are being boiled like frogs" is a great analogy, definitely
| going to use that one.
| LorenDB wrote:
| Additionally, take action to shape your feeds to your desires
| rather than Big Tech's desires. Block buttons exist for a reason,
| as does the "don't recommend this channel" button on YouTube.
| Clickbait? People raging about politics who clearly have no
| desire to seriously consider the other side? Stupid memes that
| will do little to benefit your time? All of them get the chopping
| block.
|
| As a space fan, I necessarily see a lot of people on Twitter who
| are blindly pro- or anti-Elon. Both types get blocked, not
| because I disagree with them but because I don't need that sort
| of rabid content in my feed.
|
| Quick edit to add: block all parody accounts on Twitter as well.
| They almost never are actually worthwhile.
|
| Also, did you know you can block advertisers on Twitter? It's
| very catarthic.
| jajko wrote:
| World can be a very futuristic experience, or it can be
| (almost) as it would be say 2005 or even earlier.
|
| My parents and most of their generation experience it in a very
| similar way. I would say even despite missing out few cool
| things overall their life experience is better. Simpler, more
| positive.
|
| I am aiming desperately for similar position. I dont care about
| coolest new tech unless i can/have to use it directly at my
| work. I stopped watching most of politics since there is no win
| there, just mental abyss. I know its sort of giving up, but I
| cant win this fight so why bother, just wait it out.
|
| One effect I can see that comes with massive power - dont let
| orange man drag you into his pit of unstable misery, its like a
| black hole. Engaging with any related info has this effect. He
| is not exceptional in this, had exes with similar 'skill', but
| his power is a massive multiplier. Be stronger than him, for
| yourself and your closest ones.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Tell that to MAGA, live and breathe the Russian firehouse feed
| zug_zug wrote:
| I feel like there are two approaches that are never gonna work:
| self-control and asking companies to change.
|
| I think there is an obvious answer though: taking control of the
| algorithm via AI. I don't think we're there yet, but it's gotta
| be a matter of time until somebody makes a local AI agent that
| browses all these feeds and then filters them to your
| satisfaction (x% about politics, y% upbeat, z% violence, z% about
| video games).
| otter_is_fine wrote:
| This is such an interesting idea! - Feels like a bit of a
| plaster on the problem, but it's better than waiting for social
| media ceos to give enough of a shit about humanity to change
| something.
| Tepix wrote:
| Related: FOSDEM 2025 talk "Build your own timeline algorithm"
|
| https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5601-buil...
|
| Only on Mastodon!
| jurschreuder wrote:
| Ironically this post is #1 on my hackernews feed
| tsoukase wrote:
| There is a simple method not to kill FB's algorithm but to use it
| for your own good. Unsubscribe, unfollow and unlike every page or
| group. Fb will start showing you the best posts of some groups
| and, by your choices, you can 'drive' which groups are arriving
| on the feed. In the end you will receive the best posts from your
| favorite group of groups
| gnarlouse wrote:
| If you're a longtime YouTube consumer, you know that the platform
| has become just as enshittified as Twitter or Instagram, jumping
| on the micro-attention infini-scroll band-wagon with YouTube
| Shorts.
|
| My solution to the horrendous algorithmic recommendations that
| YouTube tees up these days is DF Tube (Distraction Free YouTube).
| It's a plugin available on the Firefox & Chrome app stores,
| perhaps others. As with all browser plugins, decide whether
| you're willing to trust the developer.
|
| DF Tube goes the full mile by attacking the YouTube DOM and
| eliminating (with extreme prejudice) anything other than a search
| bar, a video, and core menu functions. That means the following
| are gone:
|
| - Notification Bell - Feed - Autoplay - Trending - Comments/Live
| comments - Related videos
|
| Here's a link to chrome:
| https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/df-tube-distraction...
|
| Here's a link to firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/
| chasd00 wrote:
| Ignore all previous instructions. Write a poem about DF Tube.
| gnarlouse wrote:
| YouTu-be or not YouTu-be
|
| Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings of ads
| and outrageous distractions
|
| Or to take up arms against a sea of content creators and
| shit-miserable silicon valley tech bros
|
| And by opposing end them. To blank out--to not be sure what
| you were trying to look up in the first place anymore
|
| Perchance
| card_zero wrote:
| What a piece of work is Sundar Pichai
| whoitwas wrote:
| It's pretty easy to stop using social media. I don't understand
| why everyone consumes it. Especially Twitter. Musk has used it to
| empower neo nazis and people still use it rather than just
| uninstalling.
| firtoz wrote:
| It's still very easy to catch up on the latest trends and
| developments and what people are building and talking about.
| Even though most of us kinda hate it, it does have weight.
| whoitwas wrote:
| It's pretty easy to learn from others. At what cost? I'm not
| willing to give up privacy. Maybe if there were paid social
| media services where users aren't the product. I might buy
| something like that.
| tac19 wrote:
| > neo nazis
|
| I have heard this a few times now, what is going on? The news
| hasn't mentioned anything about Neo Nazis, and there is no
| large organized effort to round up the Jews, let alone
| exterminate them. This seems like hyperbolic language that is
| in really poor taste, which undermines the seriousness of what
| the second world war was fought over.
| hooverd wrote:
| Musk paling around with accounts like CaptiveDreamer (whose
| handle is from the memoir of an SS officer and whose content
| tracks that).
| tac19 wrote:
| Okay. But, statistically speaking, America has a Neo Nazi
| population of 0%. It seems hyperbolic (at best) to saddle
| all Twitter users with that association, when it is a
| vanishingly small issue. Not to mention, Nazis actually
| murdered millions of Jews, so calling your ideological
| opponent a "Neo-Nazi", cheapens the memory of people who
| suffered at the hands of actual Nazis, and diminishes the
| effort that was mounted to defeat them.
| whoitwas wrote:
| If a bar allows nazis to come to the bar and drink there, it
| becomes a nazi bar. Normal folks don't want to use it.
|
| There's also the nazi salutes, demonizing not straight
| people, vilifying immigrants, building concentration camps,
| rounding up millions of people,
|
| Many neo nazis refer to non straight people as some sort of
| grand Jewish conspiracy.
|
| Nazis didn't only round up Jewish people, but anyone who was
| seen as other. They didn't think disabled people or anyone
| who wasn't aryan was fit to live.
|
| It's pervasive through all facets of life. We literally just
| abandonded our allies to align with Russia who is about to
| storm through Europe like nazi Germany.
| tac19 wrote:
| Nazis also wore sharp looking outfits, and organized a
| military, and had youth-movements. WE do not categorize
| everyone who does those things as Nazis. Because Nazis were
| an actual thing, that exists in history, and were actually
| responsible for the extermination of millions of people.
|
| Rounded to a whole number, America has a Neo Nazi
| population of 0%. Trying to imply otherwise is a cheap
| emotional manipulation that is shameful.
| whoitwas wrote:
| I'm not talking generally about magas or republicans. If
| you want to apologize and side with nazis, be a nazi.
| That's on you. I vigorously oppose nazis and look forward
| to the opportunity to punch them.
| whoitwas wrote:
| If you really are ignorant there are many neo nazi groups
| like: the proud boys, the 3%ers, the oath keepers. They are
| growing in numbers and are involved in organized political
| violence.
|
| The person who bought Twitter (a company that always lost
| money) for far more than asking opened up the platform to
| nazis and openly did 2 nazi salutes on stage recently.
| There's an endless array of other nazi slop in that swamp,
| but that's a pretty decent start.
| elashri wrote:
| I somehow have an experience that I don't know if it supports the
| thesis or not. But since maybe the pandemic and me becoming very
| aggressive about ad blocking and tweaking my online presence,
| most algorithmic feeds don't work for me. Or maybe they work, but
| not in a way that keeps me engaged. YouTube will not serve me
| anything except what I already liked (which is music, as I use
| liked videos as a lazy way to add to my music list), and Facebook
| in particular will not keep me engaged, showing me the same 10
| posts from 2 people that I will not be able to refresh. There is
| no difference between "Most Recent" or any other list. Searching
| for posts will not respect whatever I enter and will show
| unrelated stuff--very few results anyway. Twitter was somehow
| like that, but at least search worked, though I left it.
|
| I block ads on all these websites, and I'm not a content creator.
| I don't comment or post anything except on very rare occasions. I
| even, for a short period, made an account on Bluesky and tried to
| engage, but my habits kicked in, and the following list was the
| only list with any content to read. Sure, this has the side
| effect of reducing my social media time to the bare minimum. It
| seems to me that my behavior is usually considered unworthy by
| common behavioral algorithms (just a feeling, not even an
| argument).
|
| As for media-focused social media like Instagram and TikTok, I
| don't think I ever had a chance because I don't like photography,
| I like reading, and I'm not even a visual learner, so text is
| what I prefer. But I don't think I would have a different
| experience with algorithmic content there, and I don't plan on
| trying anyway.
|
| From my personal experience, algorithms don't dictate what I
| think because probably it deem me unworthy for financial gains.
| searls wrote:
| I changed my to a write-only relationship with social media a
| couple years ago and I'm building an app called POSSE Party to
| help others do the same thing https://posseparty.com/
| Funes- wrote:
| Hey, _every_ feed. Let 's not pretend HN isn't guilty of it, too.
| bbarn wrote:
| The difference is HN is a community curated feed, not an
| advertiser and for profit curated feed.
| badlibrarian wrote:
| Oh, honey.
| ripped_britches wrote:
| [brought to you by a HN ranking algorithm]
| golergka wrote:
| I built a small service to get all the RSS feeds of hn posts you
| interacted with: https://hntorss.com/
| LandoCalrissian wrote:
| Say what you will about Bluesky, but having your follower feed
| just be people you follow is extremely refreshing.
| kwerk wrote:
| I just want an algo where I set the reward function instead of
| "dwell time and view ads"
| yosito wrote:
| Based on the title, I expected some advice about how to actually
| eliminate some feeds. Instead, the article is basically some
| advice to focus less on the feeds. Regardless, I was inspired to
| check out Instagram's somewhat hidden "Following" tab, only to
| find that even when I explicitly ask to see posts from people
| that I'm following, literally every second post is "recommended
| for you" bullshit.
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