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Algorithms are breaking how we think | Technology Connections

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10h ago

Algorithms are breaking how we think - Technology Connections

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I think that has been the case for a longer time than we realize. These are the same people that sat around watching all the same garbage TV shows for decades, the same vanilla movies, and ate at the same chain restaurants. Those of us that have always looked for our own music, our own shows, our own movies, tend to continue to curate our own experiences on the internet rather than accept society’s spoon fed nonsense.
- Yup, before computer algorithms it was advertising and suveys promoting what they wanted to sell and finding out how effective it was. The algorithm is a faster and more efficent version of that process, which does make it even easier for a single person to abuse. Honestly the main problem is that the social media sites are basically a monopoly under meta at this point since it keeps buying up competitors.
  
  The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis
  The business and political worlds use psychological techniques to read, create and fulfill the desires of the public, and to make their products and speeches as pleasing as possible to consumers and voters. Curtis questions the intentions and origins of this relatively new approach to engaging the public.
  
  Exactly! This book from an ad exec in the 70s opened my eyes to all of this in the early 90s when I first came across it in my late teens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Arguments_for_the_Elimination_of_Television
- At some point I was really disillusioned by YouTube and I tried really hard to curate a list of interested channels. But YouTube fought extremely hard against users interests and completely broke YouTube. I have several subscriptions that get buried and forgotten because YouTube refuses to recommend them to me.
  The solution would be simple, an inbox of videos, rss style. But that's not in YouTube's interest.
  
  If you watch the video, you'll know that this exists and is called the subscriptions feed.
  Also, youtube channels actually have RSS feeds you can put into your reader of choice if you don't want to browse the main page, look it up
  
  I bookmark the channels I like and then go through one by one to check if they have something new, old school style. It's kind of interesting that way because it feels more personal. It's more like choosing something to watch from netflix from your saved list or similar to those.
  
  I turned off watch history which disables recommendations so my youtube homepage is blank but I always get notifications from channels I'm subscribed to
  
  I ran into a problem when they stopped recommending videos if you don’t allow them to save your search/viewing history. When I realized the extreme amount of data that this provides them, to the extent that their algorithms can likely identify what mental health issues people have that they may not even be aware of themselves, I tried to give them as little detail as I could.

"Introsepction will reveal a lot of the problems you think you have are being put in your head by influencers. You weren't unhappy until they told you you should be." 19:15-19:49(specifically 19:37-19:49)
Where he talks about quasi private conversations and context collapse. 16:53-18:39
Both parts that were my favorite.
Would be good for more people to know about this video.

I hope at some point, he will push his videos to peertube!
His Mastodon account is: @TechConnectify@mas.to
- I’m fairly certain he’s at least somewhat relying on YouTube monetization so I’m not sure what the incentive would be to also upload on PeerTube?
  
  He also uses Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/technologyconnections
  Also my take is that unlike Facebook, Instagram and others with YouTube at least you still can use subscribers page, on Facebook for example you need to use something like clean my feeds grease monkey script.

Banger vid

When I did a poll a couple months ago, I was surprised that about a quarter of the people didn't know the YouTube subscriptions page and just use the home page

Very well laid out. Biggest problem is that the people watching his channel are probably likely to already understand the problem. Certainly almost everyone here understands the problem. Preaching to the choir and all that.
Hopefully we can get more people to see it as an issue in the future.
- I have this saved to watch later, but I also feel like suggesting a 37 minute video to people who aren’t familiar with this concept would be a hard sell. And I suspect this guy is not to everyone’s taste. I’ve watched one surprisingly long video about a can opener from him. I enjoyed it, but I would describe him as a Midwest US James May, and that probably doesn’t appeal to everyone.

Hah, you got to it before I did.

as it was designed to do.

When it comes to YouTube at least, if I watch a video that has 650k+ views or contains the word Trump in the title I then have to delete it from my history afterwards or it heavily influences my feed going forward
I feel like shephard tending my feed

Explains .world I suppose

26 comments