7 ms·

The solution to this would be a law forcing these sites to allow third-party suggestion algorithms, so that you can choose who and how content is being suggeste

• kouru225 6mo ago
  Yes please. Algorithms should be plug-in-and-play and not endemic to the app. You should be able to take popular algorithms and plug them into any app
  • ceejayoz 6mo ago
    That's just laundering the bad actions though a third-party. The winning third party algorithm will be the one that gives people the same rush the first party algorithms currently do, because people will use it for the same reasons; they get to see cute AI animals do crazy things forever.
    • kouru225 6mo ago
      Nah. The main issue of addiction is the lack of clarity. You allow an addiction to pretend like it has a purpose and it can stick around. Reductionism is a great tool against this: reduce your addiction down to its most clear state and it loses all the mystique. Right now, people can pretend like they're into tiktok or youtube or instagram or twitter etc because they wanna engage in the social media landscape. Pull out the algorithm and replace it with a different one and they can't keep that lie up. They have to admit they're into the dopamine itself.
• dmbche 6mo ago
  Or algorithms have to be submitted and approved by a government body before being allowed to be implemented and are frequently audited
  • PokemonNoGo 6mo ago
    I guess this is the only way. I don't think we need novel approach and I don't consider this a novel one since we already have government agencies verifying approved processes in other areas so why not content distrubution.
• outime 6mo ago
  Virtually nobody would choose to pay a subscription for the non-addictive app version, and I'd even say this suggestion is a bit insulting to anyone who isn't high-income.
  • bitwank 6mo ago
    I will never pay a subscription for the current clickbaity slop. I might if the algorithm were better, closer to YouTube of 10 years ago, when it would suggest lectures, artfully done film shorts, and overall more interesting, high quality content.
    • squeaky-clean 6mo ago
      10 years ago the most popular 100 videos on YouTube were all pop music videos. Justin Bieber had 3 of the top 10. The youtube algorithm has been personalized for much more than 10 years and has never prioritized any kind of lectures or artful films over anything else it thinks a viewer will watch. You're asking for them to bring back an era that never existed. If you're not getting those sorts of recommendations it's because you ddon't actually watch that kind of content, or you're removing your history.
      • bitwank 6mo ago
        I’ve watched YouTube daily for nearly 20 years. The majority of the content as well as the algorithm have changed substantially over that period of time. I’m not the only one to notice this btw. There is even a word to describe the phenomenon, “enshitification”. I do clear my watch history, and have never signed into YouTube, frequently resetting the app and watching online in private sessions with adblock. The frequency with which I have to reset the app to prevent the algorithm feeding me terrible undesired content has gone up overtime, I now do it once every few weeks. That’s how much I dislike what it pushes on me. I used to get stuff like “philosophy overdose” and sapolosky’s stanford lecture series, good operas. I now get stuff like “these 5 things are killing you while you sleep!!!” and “mom is shocked to find out her teenage son is raping and eating babies severed limbs.” I’m not being hyperbolic; that’s actually what YouTube recommends.
• mentalgear 6mo ago
  The solution to all of Big Tech's monopolies is actually pretty simple: Interoperability must become a law - this includes using custom algorithms or allowing other platforms (like your own app) to access YOUR data on whatever platform 'hosts' it. Cory Doctorow wrote a great article on it: "Interoperability Can Save the Open Web" https://spectrum.ieee.org/doctorow-interoperability https://spectrum.ieee.org/doctorow-interoperability > While the dominance of Internet platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Amazon is often taken for granted, Doctorow argues that these walled gardens are fenced in by legal structures, not feats of engineering. Doctorow proposes forcing interoperability—any given platform’s ability to interact with another—as a way to break down those walls and to make the Internet freer and more democratic. Most notably, he retells how early Facebook used to siphon data from its competitor MySpace and act on user's behalf on it (e.g. reply to MySpace messages via Facebook) - and then when the Zuck(er) was top dog, moved to made these basic interoperability actions illegal by law to prevent anyone doing to him what he did to others.
  • mschuster91 6mo ago
    The foundational problem with interoperability is that it can and will immediately be abused by bad actors as long as there is no price tag attached to every piece of communication. Among social media, Mastodon (and anything Fediverse) has it the worst, obviously, but Telegram and Whatsapp are rife with spams and scams, Twitter back when it still had third-party apps was rife with credential and token compromises (mostly used to shill cryptocurrencies). As for the price tag reference - we've seen that with SMS. It used to be the case that sending SMS cost real money, something like 20 ct/message. It was prohibitively expensive to run SMS campaigns. But nowadays? It's effectively free at scale if you go the legit route and practically free if you manage to get someone's account at one of the tons of bulk SMS providers compromised. Apple's iMessage similarly makes bad actors pay a lot, because access to it is tied to a legitimate or stolen Apple product serial.
    • shimman 6mo ago
      Because some hostile entity might rat fuck the a slightly better system, we're destined to use the same current shitty system because something better might have a downside? Do you understand that this is all literally made up? The rules can change anytime and society can exert its will to make better world rather than letting a dozen people decide how technology will shape humanity (mostly in a negative capacity if you look at the current state of things).
• saadn92 6mo ago
  Third-party recommendation algorithms would be interesting, but I think they'd only address one layer of the addictive design the verdict is actually about. Autoplay, infinite scroll, notification timing, the variable reward patterns from likes and comments -- those are all independent of which algorithm picks the next video. You could swap in the most wholesome recommendation engine imaginable and a kid is still gonna sit there for hours if the UI is designed around endless content with no natural stopping points.
  • theptip 6mo ago
    I dunno, careful what you ban; TV has “infinite scroll” too.
• heyitsaamir 6mo ago
  Bluesky does this. In fact, the For You algorithm is a community built algorithm and way more popular than the native Discover algo.
• data-ottawa 6mo ago
  How do you prevent a Cambridge Analytica exfiltration situation with third party algorithms? And how does this prevent addictive algorithms which will win through social selection?
  • ceejayoz 6mo ago
    The Cambridge Analytica stuff never got fixed, it just got hidden out of sight. The situation is worse than ever now.
• ceejayoz 6mo ago
  It seems likely that'd result in even worse suggestions becoming the norm as people adopt the third-party that gives the quick dopamine rush. It's like suggesting tastier heroin to fix drug addiction.
  • bitwank 6mo ago
    Certainly not. People don’t want the slop they push, the anxiety provoking, salacious, clickbaity spam that it has devolved into. Anybody that used YouTube before the last few years can tell you the difference is pretty major. This is not content people want, it’s content that maximizes clicks and ad sales.
    • ceejayoz 6mo ago
      > People don’t want the slop they push… That's also true for heroin. Plenty of people really want to break the addiction. The slop exists because people are attracted to it.
      • bitwank 6mo ago
        Heroin is a different business model than advertising. Respectfully, you are wrong.
        • ceejayoz 6mo ago
          Gosh, if you say so...
          • pixl97 6mo ago
            Heh, it's funny watching people, like the one above you, say "This thing is addictive because it is a real object, but this digital object cannot be addictive at all". The argument is so illogical you begin to doubt you're talking to a real person.
            • 6mo ago
• basisword 6mo ago
  The real solution is going back to a chronological feed of people you actively choose to follow.
  • mindcrime 6mo ago
    At the very least, that should certainly be an option that users can select. And when the user selects a feed algo, it should stay fucking set until that same user actively chooses to change it.
• Zigurd 6mo ago
  That's called a "feed generator" on Bluesky.
• JKCalhoun 6mo ago
  If the default algo/behavior is allowed to persist, it's going to be effectively no real change. Drop the algorithm altogether? I subscribe to channels for a reason.
• theptip 6mo ago
  I’m quite bullish on disintermediating the algorithms. AI makes it very easy to plug in your own. We just haven’t figured out the plumbing yet. I’d be strongly in favor of interoperability laws to pry open the monopolies. (One dynamic you do need to be careful about especially at first - interoperability also means IG can pull your friend graph from Snapchat, so it can also make it easier for big companies to smother smaller ones that are getting momentum based on their own social graph growth due to their USP. I don’t think this is insurmountable, just something to be careful of when implementing.)
• matt_kantor 6mo ago
  > Before Spotify became popular, people would integrate Last.FM into their media players I still scrobble to Last.fm from Spotify (and other media players). I rarely use it for discovery anymore, but it's occasionally interesting to look at my historical listening trends.
• xp84 6mo ago
  Anything that’s a premium paid feature will be irrelevant. Most people don’t subscribe to YouTube premium, even though they know their kids are watching a ton of ads. Adoption has also been incredibly brisk on the ad tiers of the formerly ad-free TV services like Netflix and Hulu. I realize “less addictive algo” is a different thing to pay for than removing ads - but it’s, if anything, an even harder sell - I think the layperson wouldn’t even acknowledge that they are vulnerable to being psychologically manipulated. They think they spend so much time on these apps because it’s so enjoyable. From most parents’ point of view, paying a monthly bill for their children to have a less toxic experience on TikTok, or YouTube will be considered an extravagance instead of a responsible safety expense.
• butlike 6mo ago
  Or just stop suggesting content. The landing page is just a matrix of already followed accounts with the text "Start by following some accounts you like..." as a placeholder if it's a new account.
• foobiekr 6mo ago
  99.9% of these would just be malicious spyware that people are tricked into agreeing to.
  • sophacles 6mo ago
    So better than the 99.99% status quo?
• burlesona 6mo ago
  I think a better solution would be to repeal section 230 protection for any kind of personalized or algorithmic feed. The algorithm makes you a publisher, and you should be liable for what you publish. That would make it very hard, nigh impossible, for a platform like YouTube or TikTok to exist as it does today, and would instead favor people self-curating mechanisms like RSS readers etc.
  • mike_hearn 6mo ago
    How is RSS self curating? It's just a way to get a feed from somewhere. And under the maximally external-locus-of-control culture this jury is using, those feeds would themselves be deemed evilly addictive. There is no solution for this kind of verdict beyond appeal, or changes to the law to rule such suits out, because it's not rooted in any logical or legal principle beyond the idea that people should not be responsible for their own actions (or their children's actions). But there's no limiting factor to that belief. You can't fix it with RSS or federation or making people select who they follow or chronological feeds. Those would just get blamed for "addiction" instead.
    • burlesona 6mo ago
      Each blog you follow in the RSS model you opted in to. And each post comes from a person, or a publication, who can be held accountable for what they publish. Ordinary media, like newspapers, books, radio, and TV, have worked this way forever — people publish “channels” and you decide what channels to follow. A channel can be held accountable. The algorithm model is different. People just publish “content” into the platform, and the platform makes a custom channel for each viewer, inserting content from people you’ve never heard of and didn’t ask to follow. And it optimizes that custom channel for whatever addicts you the most. That’s fundamentally a different beast than opt-in media consumption.
      • mike_hearn 6mo ago
        And if that blog is a newspaper or other aggregator? What makes the RSS feed of the CNN front page fine, but not the RSS feed of the YouTube front page? There's really no difference. Media companies all aggressively optimize for engagement, often to the point of A/B testing headlines.
• mastax 6mo ago
  That’s like saying the solution to cigarettes is that tobacco shops must be forced to sell clove cigarettes as a not-addictive alternative.
• tshaddox 6mo ago
  This seems like a clever (but perhaps overly clever) amendment to Section 230 protections for social media. However, I've always thought that it's pretty bizarre for Section 230 protections to apply when the social media company has extremely sophisticated algorithms that determine how much reach every user-generated piece of content gets. To me there's really no distinction between the "opinion" or "editorial" section of a traditional media publication and the algorithms which determine the reach of a piece of user-generated content on Twitter, YouTube, etc.
• nradov 6mo ago
  Seriously? You think they should allow random third parties to inject code into their platforms with all the possible security risks? Regardless the intent that is a terrible idea.
• tencentshill 6mo ago
  The only solution is to outlaw all recommendation algorithms. Accounts should only have access to a chronological feed they choose to follow. The host can promote whatever they want, but it has to be the same promotions for everybody.
  • nradov 6mo ago
    I like recommendation algorithms. If someone on my friends list posted about a major life event a few days ago and I haven't seen it yet then I want that prioritized first, before more recent posts. Chronological feeds should be an option for those who want them but they shouldn't be forced on anyone.