We are being boiled like frogs. It happened gradually, one algorithmic tweak at a time. What started as a way to connect with friends has become a system that gives the corporations that run social media control over what we consume and the ability to subtly shape how we think.
We used to control apps like Facebook and Instagram with our own choices. They became daily comforts, making the world seem a little bit smaller and closer by bringing the people that we cared about together in to one place.
But from the perspective of these companies, that’s a problem. Our personal worlds, our friends, family, and connections, are finite. Once we’ve caught up, we put the app down. That’s bad for business.
Social media companies need us flicking through their apps as long as they can keep us there. More eyes on ads is more money. So they play the system a bit. You’ve lingered on enough photos of cute puppies, they know what you like.
Before long those feeds of finite content are replaced by infinite algorithmic content pulled from millions of users trying to optimise their posts to be picked up by the omnipotent algorithms. Al
28 Comments
ph4evers
Yes totally! I like Reddit because you can pick your own subreddits but even that can be flooded by ragebait/clickbait
MaxikCZ
[flagged]
tempodox
I can't help thinking that those receptive to the message would have drawn consequences long since. The feeds themselves would have chased them away. Can you wean a crack addict by telling them to stop using? Maybe, but I don't see a high probability of success. I sure hope I'm wrong.
MarkLowenstein
Seems like a mode of thinking that is appearing everywhere, not just on social media. Go to MOD Pizza. You can order any toppings you want–your favorites. Yet many if not most people will go through the menu of preselected toppings combos to see if there's one they'd like. This makes no sense to me.
dfee
Currently ranked #1 on the HN feed!
velancogito
I would disable all short videos in the feed on every platform because they are completely useless but it is not possible in these apps.
I can't remove the apps because I might need them to check something important or write someone, so I forced to use my willpower to skip these videos everyday.
svara
Social media has really proven that phrase that "the medium is the message", which I remember long ago thinking was a little odd and not obviously true.
With all the new stuff coming out in the LLM field, I've taken a cynically mechanistic view to this:
We're basically being conditioned by (the currently popular crop of) social media to work in very short context windows, which aren't sufficient for advanced reasoning.
So yes, totally. Turn it off and go read a book.
lolinder
The author sort of (but not really) acknowledges this midway through, but this is basically a summary of the most recent Technology Connections video, Algorithms are breaking how we think:
https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA
I'd rather they acknowledge Alec as the inspiration/source for this post at the beginning and explicitly, rather than just mentioning the video in passing midway through, but at least they do link to it!
qwerty456127
There will always be something dictating what you think until you really feel interested in actually thinking yourself and develop a critical and exploratory mindset. The active audience of this website probably is predominantly blessed with having this kind of mindset already but the general population probably lacks any incentive for developing it.
gavmor
Glad to see Bluesky mentioned. I look forward to trading custom feed algorithms like Pokémon: https://stronglytyped.uk/articles/bluesky-firehose-meet-hack…
letmeinhere
This advice is missing something crucial which is how to discover new creators sans feeds. Not saying it's impossible, but it's something they excel at and they've extinguished a lot of the old ways.
kjkjadksj
I’m surprised there is never more acknowledgement of this. Just look around at the other people you see in public. If they aren’t actively walking, the phone is out, sometimes even while walking. You can’t really think deeply about your life and situation if every waking second is spent looking at brainrot social media. Even people with a nose buried in a book are trading precious time in their own mind developing their own thoughts for that to instead be filled with others words and ideas.
Socrates was even complaining about this, and it’s arguably far worse what is happening today than what he was seeing.
lysace
Reddit is unfortunately a major thing in my life. There's an eternal battle between left and right politics in my small European country's relevant subreddits.
Not very healthy – it's like a never ending feed of "someone is wrong on the Internet".
For the record: "right" here is roughly equivalent with the political position of the US democratic party.
Unfortunately these subreddits are not very balanced, so when I do take a break, I see that the other side "wins" to a noticeably larger degree. Again, small country.
nisalperi
I disabled my YouTube watch history and installed Unhook. Combined, this essentially hides all recommendations, shorts, etc. I had tried blocking YouTube completely in the past, but it's a genuinely useful tool for learning and work. The new approach still lets me pull information while shielding me from the endless rabbitholes and passive consumption.
I feel so much freer!
trescenzi
For me peak internet was mid 2000s StumbleUpon. Finding random sites at the click of a button lightly sorted by theme. One major difference was people weren’t competing to get the most views. Of course monetized sites wanted more but today’s feeds create a sort of homogeneity I find less interesting because people are trying to appease an algorithm not viewers.
Exuma
Why do people really need to be told this? This is fundamentally obvious at the most extreme basic of levels. It's as obvious as a red cube being red.
snappr021
What if our primary feed is HN?
righthand
Cut the cord but for infinite-scroll addiction.
nickdothutton
I suggested a few years ago an alternative business model for platforms[1]. Rather than selling ads, sell people the ability to filter. Buy some in-platform filtration either from a provider or from another user of the platform. It had been a particularly frustrating day.
[1] https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/
grumpy-de-sre
In a lot of ways I really like recommendation algorithms, regularly I've had youtube recommend a video that's converted into new sub (eg. LiamTronix and his electric tractor conversion).
What we really need is "responsible" recommendation systems (that allow the joy of discovery while aggressively damping rage bait and extreme view points). They'd need to be trained with some kind of socially beneficial reward function rather than pure engagement or advertiser dollars.
Could such a recommendation systems operate on top of existing social graphs?
meetkevin
[dead]
mikrl
I deleted Xitter for this reason recently.
Too much disinfo: community notes and grok are IMO just running cover for the disinfo firehose.
Saw the highest profile figure on the platform (yes him) retweet the most knee jerk takes that could be easily fact checked, but weren’t.
Instead of getting upset or trying to fight it, I yanked out the algo slop cable and am back in the real world. It’s great.
ein0p
It's ironic that we're discovering this article from a feed. Sorry to tell you folks, but there's no defense against FOMO other than willpower. And the willpower is currently in short supply.
nfriedly
After watching the Technology Connections video, I realized that YouTube ReVanced has an option to default to the subscriptions tab rather than the home page. It doesn't seem that different in my case, but I probably am catching some things that I would have missed otherwise.
mifydev
I've been thinking about this, to get rid of feeds I need something that will allow me to find posts and videos via related keywords. I want to be able to search for information by myself, but in this time, I need to be able to do it at scale. AI Agents that do research for me is a step in the right direction. Also, I think the platforms would resist this by trying to gatekeep information by all means necessary.
xg15
This article that I discovered because it was at the top of HN's frontpage is really telling it like it is!
gorbachev
I've been thinking about an ideal "algorithm" for myself.
I read a lot of online content, from all kinds of sources. Different types of content: short-form, long-form, memes, WaPo editorials, sports, politics, tech, stuff, weird stuff, off-beat, serious, rants, opinions, facts.
The most delightful experiences I've had is when something totally random pops in from someplace. It could come from anywhere, but I've noticed that the best surprises come from places like longread.com, which collect good writing across a diverse set topics and sources. Pretty much all social platforms do a horrible job at this, and recommend content that is so similar to content I've already consumed that the additional value of that content is extremely low, often even negative.
I think the ideal algorithm for me would be randomly suggestions after filtering out the garbage. No ads disguised as journalism, no influencer content, no clickbait, no spam, no AI slop, etc. I would jump on a platform that does this immediately. Even better, if the platform allowed me to control the knobs on what I consider to be garbage and not garbage.
joshdavham
I think a cool idea for future legislation may be to force social media companies like Youtube, Instagram, X and Tiktok to allow users to easily disable machine learning-generated recommendations.
LinkedIn already has this feature and it's significantly reduced the amount of rage-inducing influencer hot takes that show up on my feed. You can also turn off your watch history to get far fewer recommendations on Youtube.
I still personally find LinkedIn and Youtube to be a net-negative on my mental health, but these settings have helped a lot.