PDF.
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.
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.
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.
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. They get addicted to the intense feelings the outrageous content provides.
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.
“Those companies running the orphan crushing machines are really evil.”
“Nooo, you must understand those orphans want to be crushed! They’re just fulfilling a market need!”
We have overt fascists literally controlling the internet and people are still spouting complaints about “algorithms”. jfc.
Seriously who upvotes this nonsense? This is how we got here.
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 and control them.
It’s the same problem.
the fascists are the one that put the algorithms in place.
Actually no. Every single program is an “algorithm”. Sorting by date is an “algorithm”.
You’re literally crying about something that’s ubiquitous. And that’s literally how we got here.
Do you really want more state control of “social media”? You want these wonderful fash controlling those dangerous algorithms? smh.
I don’t want any social media homie
You’re barking up the wrong tree
Take a chill pill
I do wonder how much of this is just that moderate parties are boring.
I think it’s more about rage bait. The far right just happens to have the best rage bait for the moderate majority.
And any resistance to those policies is met with more rage from the right, its a self propelling cycle.
Exactly
Why isn’t class-based rage as popular, then?
because everyone thinks they are middle-class, and everyone aspires to be rich.
very few people think improving the conditions of the working class is a worthwhile goal… the goal is to get out of the working class and feel superior to them.
i grew up a white working class town. Everyone in my town played the lottery and complained about immigrants. They did very little to actually try and improve their town lives… they thought doing so was ‘gay’. They wanted to send their kids to college, but then complained how college ‘corrupted’ us all and turned us into homos, especially when we moved away and got good jobs and had better lives.
Ah yes. The “temporarilly embarrased billionaire”. How could I forget?
What’s baffling is I meet people my own age, who make like 200K a year who also think this exact same way. They think their life right now is impoverished and they deserve to be a billionaire one day. Half my first dates the past couple of years tell me how ‘difficult’ their life is because they can’t afford first class plane tickets.
It’s mind-blowing to me.
Because the right censors that and feeds anti-socialist propaganda to the media so people misunderstand it and don’t try to fight it.
Good ol’ Red Scare propaganda.
Because it’s based on reality and doesn’t pander quite as much.
Good policy is boring. Good government is boring. A company with moderate growth targets is boring.
Well-informed, articulate, and smart opinions… are boring.
Also the fact that people with moderate views don’t tend to watch political content all that much.
Yeah “centricism” is just privileged fascism. It’s the privilege of being completely ignorant and complacent while people are genocided, concentration camped, etc.
Overt fascism definitely drives more clicks.
Keeping food in the supermarkets and having working infrastructure will definitely generate less ad revenue… I mean “engagement” than threatening to kill all foreigners and LGBT people.
“Moderates” are right-wing, just like liberals.
But still boring
US TikTok, and that’s the point. Also, we know X is under opposition control. That’s no secret.
So is Tik Tok.
Thanks for another article to dislodge friends from The Poison™.
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.
I don’t know how far my mouth can gape from shock, but who you have known
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
