Whenever you give sex, age, and preferences on an app, you are setting algorithms.
I cleared a old smartphone and downloaded the tiktok app for an experience of a sort of pre-algorithm searching. I gave minimum to no preference, and demographic data, and the wrong (adult) age, to obtain the most un-algorithmic experience for awhile. Tikto…
Whenever you give sex, age, and preferences on an app, you are setting algorithms.
I cleared a old smartphone and downloaded the tiktok app for an experience of a sort of pre-algorithm searching. I gave minimum to no preference, and demographic data, and the wrong (adult) age, to obtain the most un-algorithmic experience for awhile. Tiktok was like an alien world. Age is really big for algorithms. Rather than buying smart phone insurance we always used old phones for backup. I had several wrong age accounts to see how it changes such things as the news feeds and what is promoted in email.
I'm interested in just about anything, but I would like the algorithms to leave out porn, most hollywood and celebrity stuff, and long (TMI) discussions about the activities of personal hygiene. That saves scroll time.
An active search function is different, and should bring up what your words ask for, based direct relevance as much as possible. That's why I use alternative search engines to Bing, Google, Yahoo, etc.
Yes, I noticed that too! When the pandemic started, I made a Twitter account to keep up with breaking news. I didn't enter any of my demographic info because I just planned to use it like an RSS feed. Once everything got politicized, which happened shockingly fast, I made a point to follow equal numbers of people on the left and right to balance the information I was seeing.
It was insane -- what I saw was evidence that people on all sides were being fed different lies and half-truths while being led to believe their side was the right one. It was really sad, and it was even more sad that Twitter's leadership was actively leaning into it and fueling divisions, rather than fixing the algorithm and giving users access to balanced information.
I also noticed similar phenomenon to what you described with TikTok during the two hours I had an account before deleting it in total disgust, haha.
Algorithms are no joke. They can be really harmful. I'm skeptical that there's any way to make them work for humans, even under leadership that has the very best of intentions.
I have a Twitter account, but once they stuck a fork in SubStack, I'm not trying to grow the Twit presence. Why bother? Twitter banned a lot of people, including data analysts who came up with "wrong" conclusions, by merely graphing publicly accessible info. Some journalists who gazed upon "The Twitter Files" and wrote about the ties between Twitter and government are now at SubStack, in some cases after they were kicked out by prior employers. Interestingly, in July, a federal court has ordered the U.S. executive branch of government to cease and desist its activities to influence the content of social media.
I agree! And yes -- I'm so glad there are people defending public access to information using the legal system. What those lawsuits are doing is incredibly important. The outcomes of those lawsuits will reveal whether there is anything that sets America apart from authoritarian regimes.
I also think it would be wise for American lawyers to start challenging what constitutes "good faith" content moderation (as required under Section 230) -- because in my opinion, what I saw happen on Twitter during the pandemic, with the manipulation of algorithms and the stifling or amplification of different information for users of different demographics, was not done in good faith.
Yaa, the social media wants to be protected from libel and slander and legal liabilities as a public utility, but they've been acting like editors and publishers for a long time, which could have put them in a more vulnerable legal category. Then the executive branches of government stepped into the day to day functioning and their activities became painfully obvious. I think that many programmers and algorithm designers don't understand the laws that protect speech, or they don't like them, and/or it's all about short term profits.
Now it almost seems as though older info on net is being torn down at an accelerated rate. It might be due to web site owners fearing the various regulations placed on the web by governments, and not having the technical acumen or resources to change or secure their sites.
Agreed! Programmers are also humans, so there's always the chance that at least some of them really enjoy the level of power they have and potentially believe they're above the law in some respects because of how hidden their work is from public view -- kind of like what we often see with corrupt government officials or corrupt law enforcement. It takes an almost divine level of wisdom and restraint to exercise power in healthy ways that are actually good for others. Hence the need for checks and balances.
And I've actually noticed that as well, about search results. The internet is so, so weird and different from what it was when I was in high school, and not in a good way at all.
Whenever you give sex, age, and preferences on an app, you are setting algorithms.
I cleared a old smartphone and downloaded the tiktok app for an experience of a sort of pre-algorithm searching. I gave minimum to no preference, and demographic data, and the wrong (adult) age, to obtain the most un-algorithmic experience for awhile. Tiktok was like an alien world. Age is really big for algorithms. Rather than buying smart phone insurance we always used old phones for backup. I had several wrong age accounts to see how it changes such things as the news feeds and what is promoted in email.
I'm interested in just about anything, but I would like the algorithms to leave out porn, most hollywood and celebrity stuff, and long (TMI) discussions about the activities of personal hygiene. That saves scroll time.
An active search function is different, and should bring up what your words ask for, based direct relevance as much as possible. That's why I use alternative search engines to Bing, Google, Yahoo, etc.
Yes, I noticed that too! When the pandemic started, I made a Twitter account to keep up with breaking news. I didn't enter any of my demographic info because I just planned to use it like an RSS feed. Once everything got politicized, which happened shockingly fast, I made a point to follow equal numbers of people on the left and right to balance the information I was seeing.
It was insane -- what I saw was evidence that people on all sides were being fed different lies and half-truths while being led to believe their side was the right one. It was really sad, and it was even more sad that Twitter's leadership was actively leaning into it and fueling divisions, rather than fixing the algorithm and giving users access to balanced information.
I also noticed similar phenomenon to what you described with TikTok during the two hours I had an account before deleting it in total disgust, haha.
Algorithms are no joke. They can be really harmful. I'm skeptical that there's any way to make them work for humans, even under leadership that has the very best of intentions.
I have a Twitter account, but once they stuck a fork in SubStack, I'm not trying to grow the Twit presence. Why bother? Twitter banned a lot of people, including data analysts who came up with "wrong" conclusions, by merely graphing publicly accessible info. Some journalists who gazed upon "The Twitter Files" and wrote about the ties between Twitter and government are now at SubStack, in some cases after they were kicked out by prior employers. Interestingly, in July, a federal court has ordered the U.S. executive branch of government to cease and desist its activities to influence the content of social media.
I agree! And yes -- I'm so glad there are people defending public access to information using the legal system. What those lawsuits are doing is incredibly important. The outcomes of those lawsuits will reveal whether there is anything that sets America apart from authoritarian regimes.
I also think it would be wise for American lawyers to start challenging what constitutes "good faith" content moderation (as required under Section 230) -- because in my opinion, what I saw happen on Twitter during the pandemic, with the manipulation of algorithms and the stifling or amplification of different information for users of different demographics, was not done in good faith.
Yaa, the social media wants to be protected from libel and slander and legal liabilities as a public utility, but they've been acting like editors and publishers for a long time, which could have put them in a more vulnerable legal category. Then the executive branches of government stepped into the day to day functioning and their activities became painfully obvious. I think that many programmers and algorithm designers don't understand the laws that protect speech, or they don't like them, and/or it's all about short term profits.
Now it almost seems as though older info on net is being torn down at an accelerated rate. It might be due to web site owners fearing the various regulations placed on the web by governments, and not having the technical acumen or resources to change or secure their sites.
Agreed! Programmers are also humans, so there's always the chance that at least some of them really enjoy the level of power they have and potentially believe they're above the law in some respects because of how hidden their work is from public view -- kind of like what we often see with corrupt government officials or corrupt law enforcement. It takes an almost divine level of wisdom and restraint to exercise power in healthy ways that are actually good for others. Hence the need for checks and balances.
And I've actually noticed that as well, about search results. The internet is so, so weird and different from what it was when I was in high school, and not in a good way at all.