Submitted 2 months ago by Beep@lemmus.org to technology@lemmy.world
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The investigation looked at what content from political parties and politicians is shown to newly created accounts that are interested in parties and politicians from either the left or the right.
It found that the algorithms push content from the far right to the right-leaning and left-leaning accounts and, to a lesser extent, push content from the radical left to left-leaning accounts.
Algorithmic content is arguably the worst thing to come out of the internet.
It has made it much easier for these companies to manipulate what people see and feed into their fears and delusions.
Algorithmic content is not bad per se. It’s the algorithms that are specifically designed to create division and hate. The people who design these things know what they’re doing and are doing it because the outcomes are that they want to achieve.
They aren’t designed to do that.
They are designed to give people what they want. People want division and hate. It fuels their attention.
In the 1980s the people who had the longest listening times to Howard Stern were the people who claimed to hate him. The outraged fueled their attention such that they could not turn away because they wanted to see if he got more outrageous and offensive.
People are like kids in an candy store when it comes to negative content. They cannot get enough.
Before algos things were random and they had to try really hard to go find that stuff. The algos spoonfed it to them and they lapped it up eagerly. Back when IG was just my friends, I saw one angry rant every few weeks, today it’s 20 angry rants and 20 ads, and my friends content about their kid or cat being cute is buried by 50 other posts which I can’t get rid of.
We can have overt fascists literally controlling the internet and people will still spout nonsense complaints about “algorithms”. jfc.
More than one thing can be bad about the internet at the same time.
Furthermore, the fascists are the one that put the algorithms in place. It’s the same problem.
Anything centralized can and will be used to abuse the population at the behest of the rich and powerful. The open social web is the only answer.
And thank you all for being here.
US TikTok, and that’s the point. Also, we know X is under opposition control. That’s no secret.
So is Tik Tok.
I am so tired of “journalism” that’s just shocked Pikachuing about crap that people already know, and HAVE already known, for YEARS.
It’s either a total waste of time, or people are so thick and oblivious that they don’t know something that’s been staring them DIRECTLY In the face for AGES, and I honestly can’t decide which explanation is more depressing.
You need to verify your hypothesis if you want other people to build on it or everything will eventually crumble down like a house of cards.
Thanks for another article to dislodge friends from The Poison™.
DAE remember all the libs calling for state control of TikTok? Still calling for state control of “social media”?
This is what they gave us.
Liberalism <—> Fascism.
The downvotes are coming from liberals that refuse to acknowledge they directly support fascism
Well, duh. Antisocial media needs ppl to keep consuming to keep consuming to generate ad revenue. Currently far right are the trending clowns, so that’s one explanation. Another’s that twatter has always been a cesspool, while tiktok just shows whatever’s popular among brain-damaged individuals.
Jokes aside, might as well be a demo of the multiple testing problem, so implying that algorithmic feeds in general do this is premature (not that the article does this, so just a note).
P.s, not defending current algorithmic feeds either; I’ve personally all but cut those out of my life for good, and advocate for using white-box approaches instead, like what’s done in reccomend_from_archive that recommends tracks based on AA’s spotify scrape data and listening history/playlist exports.
I don’t know how far my mouth can gape from shock, but who you have known
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 2 months ago
I do wonder how much of this is just that moderate parties are boring.
Salvia@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I think it’s more about rage bait. The far right just happens to have the best rage bait for the moderate majority.
FireRetardant@lemmy.world 2 months ago
And any resistance to those policies is met with more rage from the right, its a self propelling cycle.
defaultusername@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Why isn’t class-based rage as popular, then?
Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Also the fact that people with moderate views don’t tend to watch political content all that much.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Yeah “centricism” is just privileged fascism.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Good policy is boring. Good government is boring. A company with moderate growth targets is boring.
Well-informed, articulate, and smart opinions… are boring.
ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 2 months ago
Keeping food in the supermarkets and having working infrastructure will definitely generate ad revenue… I mean “engagement” than threatening to kill all foreigners and LGBT people.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
“Moderates” are right-wing, just like liberals.
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 2 months ago
But still boring