Comment by ricardo81

Yeah this is a critical difference, most of the issues are sidestepped because everyone knows nobody can force a custom frontpage tailored for a specific reader.

So there’s no reason to try a lot of the tricks and schemes that scoundrels might have elsewhere, even if those same scoundrels also have HN accounts.

Only when certain people don't decide to band together and hide posts from everyone's feed by abusing "flag" function. Coincidentally those posts often fit neatly in the categories you outlined.

>Maybe OP is young or didn't frequent other communities before "social networks", but on IRC, even on Usenet you'd see these behaviors eventually.

I was too young for IRC/Usenet and started using the net/web in the late 90s, frequenting some forums. Agreed that anyone can come in and upset the balance.

I'd say the difference is that on the open web, you're free to discover and participate in those social settings for the most part. With everything being so centralised and behind an algorithm the things you're presented are more 'push' than 'pull'.

MySpace was quite literally my space. You could basically make a custom website with a framework that included socialisation. But mostly it was just geocities for those who only might want to learn html. So it was a creative canvas with a palette.

Right, but that’s slightly different.

I think the nuance here is that with algorithmic based outrage, the outrage is often very narrow and targeted to play on your individual belief system. It will seek out your fringe beliefs and use that against you in the name of engagement.

Compare that to a typical flame war on HN (before the mods step in) or IRC.

On HN/IRC it’s pretty easy to identify when there are people riling up the crowd. And they aren’t doing it to seek out your engagement.

On Facebook, etc, they give you the impression that the individuals riling up the crowd are actually the majority of people, rather than a loud minority.

Theres a big difference between consuming controversial content from people you believe are a loud minority vs. controversial content from (what you believe is from) a majority of people.

Or if the moderation was good someone would go “nope, take that bullshit elsewhere” and kick them out, followed by everyone getting on with their lives. It wasn’t obligatory for communities to be cesspits.

> Maybe OP is young or didn't frequent other communities before "social networks", but on IRC, even on Usenet you'd see these behaviors eventually

I’m not exactly old yet, but I agree. I don’t know how so many people became convinced that online interactions were pleasant and free of ragebait and propaganda prior to Facebook.

A lot of the old internet spaces were toxic cesspools. Most of my favorite forums eventually succumbed to ragebait and low effort content.

I think you touch on the crux of the issue here, that education ioos one of the most potent defenses against this kind of psychological manipulation.

But not just any education. The humanities side of things, which are focused on the foundations of thought, morality and human psychology.

These things are sadly lacking in technical degrees and it shows.

It's also IMO why we see the destruction of our education systems as a whole as a element of control over society.

Thanks for this. I didn't realize until you said it why this issue might not be observable to a certain group of people. I think this is a cognitive awareness issue. You cant really see it until you have an awareness of it through experience. I came from a drug abuse background and my wife was never involved in the level of addiction I was involved in and she has a hard time seeing how algorithms like this effect behavior

>If any game had anything like a scoreboard, or a reward for input, he'd say "it's crack points!"

I don't think it's exactly wrong, you just have to look at it on a spectrum of minimal addictiveness to meth level addiction. For example in quarter fed games getting a high score displayed to others was quite the addictive behavior.

I think the curation of all media content using your own LLM that has been tuned using your own custom criteria _must_ become the future of media.

We've long done this personally at the level of a TV news network, magazine, newspaper, or website -- choosing info sources that were curated and shaped by gatekeeper editors. But with the demise of curated news, it's becoming necessary for each of us to somehow filter the myriad individual info sources ourselves. Ideally this will be done using a method smart enough to take our instructions and route only approved content to us, while explaining what was approved/denied and being capable of being corrected and updated. Ergo, the LLM-based custom configured personal news gateway is born.

Of course the criteria driving your 'smart' info filter could be much more clever than allowing all content from specific writers. It could review each piece for myriad strengths/weaknesses (originality, creativity, novel info, surprise factor, counter intuitiveness, trustworthiness, how well referenced, etc) so that this LLM News Curator could reliably deliver a mix of INTERESTING content rather than the repetitively predictable pablum that editor-curated media prefers to serve up.

It would just become part of the shitshow, cf. Grok.

Algorithm driven social media is a kind of pollution. As the density of the pollution on those sites increases it spills out and causes the neighbors problems. Think of 4chan style raids. It wasn't enough for them to snipe each other on their site, so they spread the joy elsewhere.

And that's just one type of issue. You have numerous kinds of paid actors that want to sell something or cause trouble or just general propaganda.

I think it's less about content topic and more meta content topic. EG I don't want to remove pictures of broccoli because I don't like broccoli, I'm trying to remove pictures of food because it makes me eat more. Similarly, I don't want to remove Political Takes I Disagree With, I want to remove Political Takes Designed To Make Me Angry. The latter has a destructive viral effect whose antidote is inattention.

Echo chamber is a loaded term. Nobody is upset about the Not Murdering People Randomly echo chamber we've created for ourselves in civilised society, and with good reason. Many ideologies are internally stable and don't virally cause the breakdown of society. The concerning echo chambers are the ones that intensify and self-reinforce when left alone.

I've mentioned this a few times in the past, but I'm convinced that filters that exclude work much better than filters that include.

Instead of algorithms pushing us content it thinks we like (or what the advertisers are paying them to push on us), the relationship should be reversed and the algorithms should push us all content except the content we don't like.

Killfiles on Usenet newsreaders worked this way and they were amazing. I could filter out abusive trolls and topics I wasn't interested in, but I would otherwise get an unfiltered feed.

At least when you do this you are aware of it happening. Algorithmic feeds can shift biases without you even noticing.

> I personally dont feel like an ultra filtered social media which only shows me things I agree with is a good thing. Exposing yourself to things you dont agre with is what helps us all question our own beliefs and prejudeces, and grow as people.

You are the one who gets to control what is filtered or not, so that's up to you. It's about choice. By the way, a social media experience which is not "ultra filtered" doesn't exist. Twitter is filtered heavily, with a bias towards extreme right wing viewpoints, the ones it's owner is in agreement with. And that sort of filtering disguised as lack of bias is a mind virus. For example, I deleted my account a month or so ago after discovering that the CEO of a popular cloud database company that I admired was following an account who posted almost exclusively things along the lines of "blacks are all subhuman and should be killed." How did a seemingly normal person fall into that? One "unfiltered" tweet at a time, I suppose.

> To me, only seeing things you know you are already interested in is no better than another company curating it for me.

I curate my own feeds. They don't have things I only agree with in them, they have topics I actually want to see in them. I don't want to see political ragebait, left or right flavoured. I don't want to see midwit discourse about vibecoding. I have that option on Bluesky, and that's the only platform aside from my RSS reader where I have that option.

Of course, you also have the option to stare endlessly at a raw feed containing everything. Hypothetically, you could exactly replicate a feed that aggregates the kind of RW viewpoints popular on Twitter and look at it 24/7. But that would be your choice.

> Exposing yourself to things you dont agre with is what helps us all question our own beliefs and prejudeces, and grow as people.

I have another wise-sounding soundbite for you: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." —Voltaire. All this sounds dandy and fine, until you actually try and examine the beliefs and prejudeces at hand. It would seem that such examination is possible, and it is—in theory, whereas in practice, i.e. in application of language—"ideas" simply don't matter as much. Material circumstance, mindset, background, all these things that make us who we are, are largely immutable in our own frames of reference. You can get exposed to new words all the time, but if they come in language you don't understand, it's of no use. This is not a bug, but a feature, a learned mechanism that allows us to navigate massive search spaces without getting overwhelmed.

I saw that, and I'm sorry it happened. I thought both the response to your original post and the resulting backlash to both you and everyone who engaged with you sincerely were absurd. I think that because of atproto you have the flexibility to create a social media experience where that sort of thing cannot happen, but I also understand why you in particular would be put off from the whole thing.

> My account got flagged as spam, still no idea why.

This happened to me too, 3 weeks ago. The email said why I got flagged as spam, I replied to the email explaining I actually was a human, and after some minutes they unflagged my account. Did you not receive an email saying why?

Well that's the thing -- you might be flagged as spam in the Bluesky PDS, but there are other PDS's, with their own feeds and algorithms, and in fact you can make your own if you so choose. That's a lot of work, and Twitter is definitely easier, but atproto means that an LLM cannot steal your voice.

If you follow certain people, various communities will, en mass, block you and report you automatically with software "block lists". This can lead to getting flagged as spam.

I’m surprised at how much regulation has become viewed as a silver bullet in HN comments.

Like you said, the implicit assumption in every call for regulation is that the regulation will hurt companies they dislike but leave the sites they enjoy untouched.

Whenever I ask what regulations would help, the only responses are extremes like “banning algorithms” or something. Most commenters haven’t stopped to realize that Hacker News is an algorithmic social media site (are we not here socializing with the order of posts and comments determined by black box algorithm?).

> But if picturing that guy running the show feels like a disaster, then let’s be honest: the issue isn’t the absence of regulation, it’s the desire to force the world into your preferred shape.

For example, we can forbid corporations usage of algorithms beyond sorting by date of the post. Regulation could forbid gathering data about users, no gender, no age, no all the rest of things.

> Calling it “regulation” is just a polite veneer over wanting control.

It is you that may have misinterpreted what regulations are.

Control is the whole point. One person being in charge, enacting their little whims, is what you get in an uncontrolled situation and what we have now. The assumption is that you live in a democratic society and "the regulator" is effectively the populace. (We have to keep believing democracy is possible or we're cooked.)

By a not-for-profit community organization that has 0 connect/interest in any for-profit enterprising that represents the stable wellbeing of society with a specific mandate to do so.

Just like the community organizations we had that watched over government agencies that we allowed to be destroyed because of profit. It's not rocket science.

It's really not that complicated:

- Ban algorithmic optimization that feeds on and proliferates polarisation.

- To heal society: Implement discussion (commenting) features that allow (atomic) structured discussions to build bridges across cohorts and help find consensus (vs 1000s of comments screaming the same none-sense).

- Force the SM Companies to make their analytics truly transparent and open to the public and researchers for verification.

All of this could be done tomorrow, no new tech required. But it would lose the SM platforms billions of dollars.

Why? Because billions of people posting emotionally and commenting with rage, yelling at each other, repeating the same superficial arguments/comments/content over and over without ever finding common ground - traps a multitude more users in the engagement loop of the SM companies than people have civilised discussions, finding common ground, and moving on with a topic.

One system of social media that would unlock a great consensus-based society for the many, the other one endless dystopic screaming battles but riches for a few while spiralling the world further into a global theatre of cultural and actual (civil) war thanks to the Zuckerbergs & Thiels.

I’d favour regulation towards transparency if nothing else. Show what factors influence appearance in a feed.

Recasting regulation as a desire for control is too reductive. The other point of regulation is compromise. No compromise at all is just a wasted opportunity.

They seem to artificially create filter bubbles, echo chambers and rage. They do that just for the money. They divide societies.

For example:

(Trap of Social Media Algorithms: A Systematic Review of Research on Filter Bubbles, Echo Chambers, and Their Impact on Youth)

> First, there is a consistent observation across computational audits and simulation studies that platform curation systems amplify ideologically homogeneous content, reinforcing confirmation bias and limiting incidental exposure to diverse viewpoints [1,4,37]. These structural dynamics provide the “default” informational environment in which youth engagement unfolds. Simulation models highlight how small initial biases are magnified by recommender systems, producing polarization cascades at the network level [2,10,38]. Evidence from YouTube demonstrates how personalization drifts toward sensationalist and radical material [14,41,49]. Such findings underscore that algorithmic bias is not a marginal technical quirk but a structural driver shaping everyday media diets. For youth, this environment is especially influential: platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are central not only for entertainment but also for identity work and civic socialization [17]. The narrowing of exposure may thus have longer-term consequences for political learning and civic participation.

https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15/11/301

> Much of the hate and the fear and the envy that I see on social networks have other reasons

Maybe so, but do you really think actively amplifying or even rewarding them has no effect on people whatsoever?

Is hate, fear, or envy by themselves wrong, or only wrong when misdirected?

What if social media and the internet at large is now exposing people to things which before ha been kept hidden from them, or distorted? Are people wrong to feel hate?

I know the time before the internet, when a very select few decided what the public should know and not know, what they should feel, what they should do and how they should behave. The internet is not the first mass communications, neither are social media or LLMs. The public has been manipulated and mind primed by mass media for over a century now.

The largest bloodshed events World War I and II were orchestrated by lunatics screaming in the radio or screaming behind a pulpit, and the public eagerly being herded by them to the bloodshed.

This comment isn't in opposition to yours, it's just riffing on what you said.

Just because the free market isn't producing results you like doesn't mean that more regulation would make it better.

Yeah I just LinkedIn as a public resume and message system with recruiters. Though even that goes through my email

Better suggestion: Ignore the feed if you don’t like it.

Don’t visit the site unless you have a reason to, like searching for jobs, recruiting, or looking someone up.

I will never understand these posts that imply that you’re compelled to read the LinkedIn feed unless you delete your account. What’s compelling you people to visit the site and read the feed if you hate it so much? I don’t understand.

As someone who doesn't, and never has, had a linkedin. What would a "competitor" look like? There's plenty of job boards. What are you using linkedin for?

Do you really want a “competitor” to linkedin? Do you really want to have to make and manage accounts on multiple sites because you need a job and you don’t know which a company uses?

Isn’t it better to have a single place you check when you need a job because everyone else is also there?

[dead]

I don't understand how people can be so dismissive of LinkedIn purely for its resume function.

For essentially every "knowledge worker" profession with a halfway decent CV, a well kept LinkedIn resume can easily make a difference of $X0,000 in yearly salary, and the initial setup takes one to a few hours. It's one of the best ROI actions many could do for their careers.

How dismissive many engineers are of doing that and the justifications for that are often full of privilege.

You have a special loathing for a site where you can message professional contacts when you need to?

Nobody is forcing you to use the social networking features. Just use it as a way to keep in touch with coworkers.

Reddit may be next. The number of "promoted" items is increasing.

Dude that's an algorithm.

Yes, you absolutely can do this and back in the before times Facebook used to have an API that let you design your own interface to it.

But now I think that will be treated with as much derision by FAANG as ad blockers because you're preventing them from enraging you to keep you engaged and afraid. Why won't you think of the shareholder value (tm)?

But mandating API access would be fantastic government regulation going forward. Don't hold your breath.

> The algorithm doesn’t show you “more of the things you engage with”,

That’s literally what the complaint was that I was responding to.

You even immediately contradict yourself and agree that the algorithm shows you what you engage with

> But you make one three word comment about Brexit and the algorithm goes up

> Now your feed is trash forever, unless you engage with content from another mainstream category

This is exactly what I already said: If you want to see some content, engage with it. If you don’t want to see that content, don’t engage with it.

Personally, I regret engaging with this thread. Between the ALL CAPS YELLING and the self-contradictory posts this is exactly the kind of rage content and ragebait that I make a point to unfollow on social media platforms.