Comment by shirro
6 days ago
The algorithm has been given a job todo. First priority on any platform is engagement and a well functioning, complete human being is not going to be engaged by rage bait and hate. They are rare, precious jewels. The shit gets dumped on people who are lonely, have a grudge, feel left out. It is relentless and escalates until their brains cook. Algorithmic social media is a massive social harm. The people who are in deep likely need years of deprogramming and therapy to recover which they will never get.
These platforms need to be shut down and people with a conscience need to stop using them, regardless of their own positive experiences, to deny them the power of network effects and their impact on the vulnerable.
I genuinely think we will look back at the algorithmic content feed as being on par with leaded gasoline or cigarettes in terms of societal harm.
Maybe worse since it is engineered to be as addictive as possible down to an individual level.
Then again maybe I'm being too optimistic that it will be fixed before it destroys us.
I think it's worse, cigarettes never threatened democracy
the solution is real easy, section 230 should not apply if there's an recommendation algorithm involved
treat the company as a traditional publisher
because they are, they're editorialising by selecting the content
vs, say, the old style facebook wall (a raw feed from user's friends), which should qualify for section 230
> cigarettes never threatened democracy
Off topic, but I bet a book on tobacco cultivation/history would be fascinating. Tobacco cultivation relied on the slave labor of millions and the global tobacco market influenced Jefferson and other American revolutionaries (who were seeing their wealth threatened). I've also read that Spain treated sharing seeds as punishable by death? The rare contrast that makes Monsanto look enlightened!
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The problem with this is that section 230 was specifically created to promote editorializing. Before section 230, online platforms were loath to engage in any moderation because they feared that a hint of moderation would jump them over into the realm of "publisher" where they could be held liable for the veracity of the content they published and, given the choice between no moderation at all or full editorial responsibility, many of the early internet platforms would have chosen no moderation (as full editorial responsibility would have been cost prohibitive).
In other words, that filter that keeps Nazis, child predators, doxing, etc. off your favorite platform only exists because of section 230.
Now, one could argue that the biggest platforms (Meta, Youtube, etc.) can, at this point, afford the cost of full editorial responsibility, but repealing section 230 under this logic only serves to put up a barrier to entry to any smaller competitor that might dislodge these platforms from their high, and lucrative, perch. I used to believe that the better fix would be to amend section 230 to shield filtering/removal, but not selective promotion, but TikTok has shown (rather cleverly) that selective filtering/removal can be just as effective as selective promotion of content.
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> As interpreted by some courts, this language preserves immunity for some editorial changes to third-party content but does not allow a service provider to "materially contribute" to the unlawful information underlying a legal claim. Under the material contribution test, a provider loses immunity if it is responsible for what makes the displayed content illegal.[1]
I'm not a lawyer, but idk that seems pretty clear cut. If you, the provider, run some program which does illegal shit then 230 don't cover your ass.
[1] https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12584
You can draw a fairly clear line from the corporate response to cigarettes being regulated through to the strategy for climate change and social media/crypto etc.
The Republicans are basically a coalition of corporate interests that want to get you addicted to stuff that will make you poor and unhealthy, and underling any collective attempt to help.
The previous vice-president claimed cigarettes don't give you cancer and the current president thinks wind turbine and the health problems caused by asbestos are both hoaxes. This is not a coincidence.
The two big times the Supreme Court flexed their powers were to shut down cigarette regulation by the FDA and Obama's Clean Power plan. Again, not a coincidence.
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THIS, EXACTLY!
If there is an algorithm, the social media platform is exactly as responsible for the content as any publisher
If it is only a straight chronological feed of posts by actually followed accts, the social media platform gets Section 230 protections.
The social media platforms have gamed the law, gotten legitimate protections for/from what their users post, but then they manipulate it to their advantage more than any publisher.
>>the solution is real easy, section 230 should not apply if there's an recommendation algorithm involved
>>treat the company as a traditional publisher
>>because they are, they're editorialising by selecting the content
>>vs, say, the old style facebook wall (a raw feed from user's friends), which should qualify for section 230
They fought a civil war over the labor required to produce tobacco.
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Social media cannot "threaten democracy". Democracy means that we transfer power to those who get the most votes.
There's nothing more anti-democratic than deciding that some votes don't count because the people casting them heard words you didn't like.
The kind of person to whom the concept of feed ranking threatening democracy is even a logical thought believes the role of the public is to rubber stamp policies a small group decides are best. If the public hears unapproved words, it might have unapproved thoughts, vote for unapproved parties, and set unapproved policy. Can't have that.
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> never threatened democracy
The beautiful part is how non-partisan this is. It cooks all minds regardless of tribe.
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Why change section 230? You can just make personalized algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement illegal instead, couldn't you? What advantage does it have to mess with 230, wouldn't the result be the same in practice?
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If your tree is so weak that a single breeze can knock it off, why blame the wind? Disclaimer: I hate social media of all kinds, it's just that you're missing the forest.
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> we will look back at the algorithmic content feed as being on par with leaded gasoline or cigarettes in terms of societal harm
I agree 100%.
However, I think the core issue is not the use of an algorithm to recommend or even to show stuff.
I think the issue is that the algorithm is optimized for the interests of a platform (max engagement => max ad revenue) and not for the interests of a user (happiness, delight, however you want to frame it).
And there's way too much of this, everywhere.
We live in a society that only values money so why should anyone optimise for s.th. else?
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If anything the algorithmic dopamine drip is just getting started. We haven't even entered the era of intensely personalized ai-driven individual influence campaigns. The billboard is just a billboard right now, but it won't be long before the billboard knows the most effective way to emotionally influence you and executes it perfectly. The algorithm is mostly still in your phone.
That's not where it stops.
It’s crazy (but true) to think that by slowly manipulating someone’s feed, Zuck and Musk could convert people’s religions, political leanings, personal values, etc with little work. In fact, I would be surprised if there was NOT some part of Facebook and Twitter’s admin or support page where a user’s “preferences” could be modified i.e “over the next 8 months, convert the user to a staunch evangelical Christian” etc
FB was always conversion as a service
Yeah might not ever get fixed. It is the perfect tool for mass influence and surveillance of the people. The powers that he would never let it go
It's literally why Leon bought Twitter. A Mass influence vehicle.
My wife was complaining about far right knuckle draggers turning up in her feed. I assume the algorithm was shovelling more of them at her because she was rubbernecking. I told her to try a "block every time" approach. It took about two weeks until her feed was (mostly) free of them but it still throws one at her now and again.
I offer this as a data point about how hard it is to turn a polluted feed around. But I'm now wondering if "feed cleaning" is a service that could be automated, via LLM.
How can we complain that everyone is siloed and no one talks to each other and complian that their feed is full of ideas outside of the silo.
What next? The intellectual dark web? I think we can have a free market of ideas or whatever you’re fetishising without it meaning that I can’t sit on the couch and open an app to see some family photos without it being intermingled with some loser saying that trans people should be hanged on the street.
And you know for a fact that I am not exaggerating. This is where the current political discourse is at.
Can I please have the freedom to do that without the lecture?
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The worst to me is the way people dehumanize other people who don't agree with them.
The other side politically doesn't just have different views, they are barely human knuckle draggers. Basically neanderthals, so who cares if they go extinct.
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Do you think you should have full control over the web browser on the computer you own?
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what the poster mentioned did not sound like a balanced exchange of ideas was about to happen...
I want Facebook to be like the current top post on here: my family and friends social stuff. I can come to hn to get out of my silo.
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I did this on reddit to try and get a useful /r/all and it ended up being mostly cats. I never look or vote on cat pictures but by just removing political serial posters, thats what I got.
They offer controls in the three-dots menu that say:
+ Interested Show more this like this in my feed
and
- Not Interested Show less things like this in my feed
They even allow clicking those repeatedly on the same post.
I mainly want to clean other people's feeds. There are an enormous amount of people that I need to undergo an algorithm detox.
Yeah, there's always someone saying "Just delete your Facebook account" as if that solves the underlying "Facebook is actively encouraging divisiveness" problem.
My mother-in-laws Facebook feed is full of fake news - from the left, politically. My own mom doesn’t have a Facebook, but she still manages to balance out the universe with fake news from the right on her YouTube feed.
The internet is a mistake for a lot of people and I don’t think we can fix that.
I think the feeds depends on the posts you read, even accidentally.
My feed is free from extreme left content but I didn't have to block anything. Simply by not reading that kind of content, the algorithm knows I am not interested.
Yes, hence my comment about "rubbernecking". If you tend to slow down for car crashes, the algorithm shows you more car crashes. It amplifies our worst instincts.
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> My wife was complaining about far right knuckle draggers turning up in her feed.
This is what is so difficult in facebook vs. HN. Here if people post angry insulting rants, it gets collectively downvoted to oblivion. That is effective.
On facebook there is no equivalent. All I can do is block an individual, but I personally have to do it for every offensive person, which is for practical purposes impossible. Facebooks needs a downvote button and an option to hide any comments which have N downvotes.
"I'm not interested" and "Don't show posts from this person" is the dowvote button for the algorithm. If you use those functions liberally your feed gets pretty clean and aligned.
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It is sad to think some of the world’s smartest brains developed these incredibly successful algorithms.
They are equally capable of developing something to lift people up.
Facebook sucks but Reddit's algorithm is even worse. The only positive thing I will say in favor of Reddit is you can turn their algorithm off as Facebook has consistently denied its users a chronological feed of their friends.
How do other people use reddit? I'm subscribed to a bunch of subreddits and that's the content I see. Reddit is honestly one of the more positive parts of the web for me.
which subreddits do you frequent? My experience of any coding subreddits is lots of posturing, lots of closing, no few actually useful answers or discussion
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Should I stop using my phone because some people do crime through the phone so I'm protecting children by not calling anyone?
I think it is a mistake to think about people as being helpless consumers of the algorithm. The OP's mom no doubt makes some intentional choices in her life that make a difference. It just doesn't help that the algorithm will lean into whatever will get the most engagement.
> The shit gets dumped on people who are lonely, have a grudge, feel left out.
No, it gets dumped on pretty much everybody.
My Insta consists of travel and food pictures, and the people I follow are friends IRL and a very few travel/food influencers. So my feed consists of friends, travel/food content, dirty jokes thanks to my buddy who keeps sending them, and an ever increasing proportion of ads.
But both my "suggested reels" and the search view are exactly what the OP was complaining about: a non-stop parade of thirst traps by "content creators" pitching their OnlyFans accounts.
I mostly use Facebook by clicking on email notifications which are always real posts or comments by my real life friends. Some of them are a bit political but I just ignore those.
I just tried scrolling down the homepage and mine doesn't have any extreme political crap. However, it does have local political crap about the popular local issues (mostly bike lanes). Most of it is just harmless stuff like dashcam videos of bad local drivers, historic photos of my city, local issues like city infrastructure problems, curiosities like rare animals or space photos, and ads - tons and tons of ads.
I think it probably depends what you've engaged with indeed.
Does FB have a "following only" option like Instagram?
If it did I'd use it more. As it is, I check FB once a week-ish, see a few too many suggested posts and leave.
I find Facebook and Instagram are both completely polluted by that type of content. Facebook used to be trying to feed me right-wing rage bait and I think actively blocking finally cleared my feed of most of it and now it's all thirst-trap stuff. At least it's figured out I'm gay compared to Instagram.
“right-wing rage bait”
Assuming you mean crap like “school book bans”, climate change denialism, or some dude coal rolling… You realize that is actually bait targeted at you specifically right? It wouldn’t work as bait if it was shit you agreed with! It’s actually left-wing rage bait!
If you were immersed in the “right wing echo chamber” your flavor of rage bait would be about a school introducing a neutral bathroom policy, or some college student struggling to define what a woman is. Every Christmas you’d see articles about cities banning Christmas lights in town hall and Starbucks no longer using Christmas themed cups. It’s all fucking made up nonsense. No real human acts the way these algorithms portray us.
Honestly even ‘right-wing’ and ‘left-wing’ are part of the trick. Real people don’t exist on a binary axis. We’re all a weird mess of values and experiences that don’t fit neatly into two boxes. But the algorithm needs two teams, because you can’t sell outrage without an enemy.
The first step to detox is seeing everyone as human not as a contrived label.
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People will engage with and promote that stuff even without a recommendation algorithm. Lots of subreddits are full of ragebait if you look at the most-upvoted posts.
>These platforms need to be shut down and people with a conscience need to stop using them, regardless of their own positive experiences, to deny them the power of network effects and their impact on the vulnerable.
In places where media is very biased to one political idea, online platforms like Facebook can be a breath of fresh air, people can share their ideas, voice their thoughts and concerns and express their opinions.
This is invaluable for democracy and it does have effect in the real life as it shapes the elections.
People don't depend just on the media anymore to have an informed opinion and the propaganda is much less effective.
They could be, but they aren't. When they catch your political bias, they will push your flavor of propaganda to you as heavily as classical media.
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And yet the algorithm has spent the last 3 or more weeks pumping MAGA, county and state Republican party, conservative Christian pages. There's a hand on the dials of "the algorithm"
escalation is often profitable before it is visibly catastrophic
> The shit gets dumped on people who are lonely, have a grudge, feel left out.
Like teenagers.
> The people who are in deep likely need years of deprogramming and therapy to recover which they will never get.
Like a cult. Current social media is like a cult that preys on teenagers. No wonder they want to ban it for young people. American government trying to forcefully spread its cult via the freedom.gov proxy is the vile cherry on top.
This is a quantitative change for Trump. He went from preying on a few kids to preying on all the kids in the world. He must feel ecstatic.