Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think
292 comments
·March 8, 2025lolinder
tom_usher
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.
jasode
>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%E2%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
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.
Terr_
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?
karmakaze
I started using Youtube as a frequent content source in the past year. I've been aggressively curating my recommendations by clicking "Not interested" on anything I don't want to see a lot of. If I'm curious I'll watch the one video but in Incognito. If a channel gets repeatedly re-recommended I don't hesitate to use "Don't recommend channel". I also +like everything I've watched and subscribe to channels I'll more likely watch than not watch new content. Getting recommendations pruned feels like getting to a zero email Inbox.
ants_everywhere
> 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.
alpinisme
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.
nativeit
RIYL: Tom Scott's There Is No Algorithm For Truth [1] delivered to the Royal Society in October 2019.
tom_usher
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.
harrall
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.
pseudosaid
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.
bryant
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.
scics
[flagged]
lolinder
Hey, that's not fair. We all engage with other people's ideas all the time, no one is really a unique thinker. The best model I have for intellectual activity is that it's a multiple-millennia-long conversation between people over generations.
The main thing is that it's important to acknowledge who it is that you're replying to and to be very clear about to what degree you're synthesizing their thoughts versus contributing your own. But we're all derivative thinkers in the end, even those of us who get famous for original thinking.
zdw
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.
nerevarthelame
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
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?
alwa
One difference is that HN uses a ranked list. You can generally count on things getting less salient the farther you “scroll.”
It’s the same way that infinitely-scrolling Google results don’t have the same effect as infinitely-scrolling content chutes, which exploit the hunch that there might be something gold just around the next swipe…
mattmein
A few years ago I set up a ublock filter to hide the next/more buttons on hacker news and reddit. It works great because I can still get my news fix, but I can't scroll endlessly.
Ublock Origin: ! 2020-10-11 https://news.ycombinator.com news.ycombinator.com##.morelink
atrus
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.
mnky9800n
Steve jobs said computers are a bicycle for the mind. Falling off a bicycle without a helmet is a great way to become a donut. Maybe computer users need helmets too. Please join me in abusing this metaphor.
AndyKelley
I'm sure Alec would celebrate that his ideology, which is also not original, is spreading.
gonzobonzo
I tried watching that video, but found it to be pretty bad. The beginning was good - demonstrating how much information we have at our fingertips, yet don't use. But then it veers off into what feels like a lot of personal frustrations he has - with the replies he's gotten at BlueSky, with politics, with the media, etc., and it feels like he's using algorithms as an excuse to vent against things he doesn't like.
The worst part is, it feels like he's making the same mistakes he's warning others about yet doesn't even realize it. He claims the bad BlueSky users are the result of algorithms, but doesn't (from what I can tell) see that his problem is that he's paying attention to a feed that brings those people to him. He complains about social media turning everything into a monolithic good vs. evil outrage generator, but then he does the exact same thing when talking about the New York Time's Canada editorial. You can say he's justified in that, but isn't everyone going to believe that they're the exception and that their outrage is justified?
I've seen this kind of criticism before, where it feels like someone is captured by something, can't escape it, gets annoyed by certain elements of it, and then creates a criticism of it that's more about venting their personal frustrations than actually escaping it (since they can't see how trapped they themselves are).
I find this claim unlikely, since there have always been crazies on the internet, and main issue is that a single crazy person can be online 24/7 with an output that dwarfs a dozen normal people.
C-x_C-f
In the spirit of the video (and the article), I'm watching this on Freetube [0] while hiding the comments, recommended videos tab, and pretty much everything else apart from the video description.
ip26
… and you are watching it because the HackerNews algorithm put this link on the top of its feed.
ThePowerOfFuet
No algo, but upvotes plus some curation from @dang.
cameldrv
Great video, but this is something lots of people have been talking about for over a decade.
svara
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
> 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
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.
pharrington
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.
lawn
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.
jxjnskkzxxhx
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
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.
rad_gruchalski
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
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.
dinkumthinkum
What's weird about the kind of responses in this thread stating "books" or whatever "can also be bad so social media is no different" is that it's not as if we don't already have data about this. We have a lot of data on the outcomes of people that spend time reading books vs people glued to social media, regarding attention spans, etc. The proof is in the eating, we don't have to speculate about hypotheticals.
miohtama
> 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...
lezojeda
[dead]
ddq
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!)
mlekoszek
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.
ndm000
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.
ncr100
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.
jahewson
“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.
sien
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.
deadbabe
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.
rxmmah
not just turn it off. DELETE IT ALL!
timewizard
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
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
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
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.
grumpy-de-sre
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
Maybe we need a client side rather than server side recommendation system. I.e. one that's under our control.
dharmab
Isn't this the concept behind BlueSkye? https://docs.bsky.app/docs/starter-templates/custom-feeds
Scion9066
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.
Seattle3503
How would do collaborative filtering while respecting privacy?
dinkumthinkum
How do you decide what is an extreme view point? This "socially beneficial reward function" could, and actually has, lead to things Google Gemini's depiction Founding Fathers or Vikings, etc.
lysace
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.
stego-tech
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.
heavensteeth
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
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.
thuanao
Huh that’s a perspective I hadn’t thought about before. Thanks for sharing.
richie_adler
Very positive attitude. Beware the sealions, but keep up!
fph
Browse individual subreddits, in this way you avoid most of 'the algorithm'.
crims0n
There is a book for this, aptly titled “You Should Quit Reddit”. It got me to quit, highly recommend it.
ddq
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.
nozzlegear
I've quit Reddit off and on over the years, and one of my fears the first time was missing out on news or helpful tips from small professional/hobby subreddits. I ended up building a tool that would email me the top 3 posts from a list of subreddits every day, and that was all I needed to quit without feeling like I was missing out. My tool eventually broke after Reddit's api change, but now I use one called redditletter¹ which does the same thing.
lysace
CliffsNotes (ish):
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosurf/comments/1693ky4/you_should_...
ncr100
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 ...
trescenzi
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
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
A lot of the sites there are pre-2020 era but some weird and wonderful stuff!
trescenzi
This is awesome thank you!
tempodox
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.
ncr100
> 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
tempodox
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.
bitmasher9
Talking helps. That’s why therapy is effective. Even just bringing awareness to the problem can help people.
Talking isn’t a magic bullet, but it’s part of the solution.
EA-3167
Meanwhile we have gambling addiction that flies in the face of everything you're saying here.
gavmor
Sure, but it's nice to be reaffirmed, and maybe this is handy grist for discussions with friends, family, and colleagues.
cratermoon
ncr100
Cute.
Learning how to think critically, I think that's the intersection of this cartoon and this blog post.
nisalperi
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!
EigenLord
This post sounds like it wants to be a manifesto but really doesn't add up to much and lacks punch.
Getting away from the algos is untenable if you use the mainstream internet in any capacity. The trick is to be more intentional about gaming them to your advantage. My feeds usually surface things I value because I am deliberate about what signals I reinforce. I don't engage with content that outrages or upsets me, so it doesn't show me it. Some people are rage addicts and want to get into a doom loop because it fulfills their psychological sense of certainty that things will only get worse. Other people are ignorant of the algorithms and how they work so they never realize it is presenting a distorted picture.
Having varied pipelines for information intake is important too. Forums like this that are non-algorithmic, doing your own searches, visiting websites you like directly, all of this lends itself to that end. No need to go luddite if you like your internet things. Just be conscious of consumption.
__rito__
I have two thumb rules about social media scrolling:
1. Use social media at only one particular time of the day. Inside a strict time window. That's it. Even if you are sitting idly on a car, traveling, or even standing in a queue for something, don't open the scroller app. Just be. Even if you are sick and in bed, don't open the scroller. Make a conversation, read a book, watch a movie, listen to a talk, but never open the scroller. This I learned from Cal Newport, and at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I will say this has made my life better. And if you do this for some months, you will like the changes in your brain.
2. Don't consume any content without premeditated intent. Don't aimlessly scroll, ever. This point is there in the OP. I scroll a particular FB group only for ~10 ninutes a day. I scroll my very narrow CS/Math/Programming YouTube account for ~15 minutes and add videos to Watch Later. That's it.
letmeinhere
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
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.
otter_is_fine
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...
bitmasher9
A few ways I do this
* In Bluesky I read retweets and comments to find new people to follow.
* I send content to friends and they send some back. I’ve found creators this way.
* Search for interesting topics, see who is generating content on those topics. Follow/subscribe if you’d like to see more.
fmajid
The real issue is control. Facebook allowed you to go back to chronological view by appending &sk=chr to the URL, but they removed that safety valve at some point. Depending on context you may want to sort your feed chronologically, by relevance (which requires training or AI), or more exotic ways, but none of the platforms will give you that modicum of agency.
You also need filtering to remove the manufactured pop-culture dross like the Kardashians that is the new opium of the people.
zug_zug
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).
tim333
I was thinking that, that what I'd like is an AI that knows me and I can ask what's out there I'd like to see and I can give it instructions. Not really just percentages but what's interesting for me which I guess requires quite a lot of knowledge of me.
otter_is_fine
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.
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!