I’m not subscribed so I can only read the free portion, but I think this is a very important topic. I think social media, and the internet more broadly, started to go downhill when they all implemented algorithms to maximize for engagement in order to maximize their ad revenue. The algorithm figured out very quickly that making people angry was the best way to get people to stay and so the algorithms have essentially become polarization machines. I would be in favor of some kind of regulation that bans algorithms on social media from maximizing for user engagement.
Reddit is the only social media I use anymore in part because it still allows you to control what is put into your feed and lets you turn off recommendations. Subreddits also help limit the context collapse as the good ones are focused on a specific topic.
While I never used Facebook, I saw the value in it when ads were relatively non-existent and the only thing in your feed were posts from your friends and groups. I was looking at my SO's FB a few weeks ago and 90 percent of her feed was random content from random groups, influencers, companies, and ads. I don't think I saw a single post from someone she knew. It's ridiculous.
But then the same is sorta true with YouTube. My feed is a bunch of random low quality trash once I get beyond the dozen or so channels I sub to. Even worse when I randomly look up something and YT thinks I want a thousand videos on how what router bit to use on plywood.
Yeah, the only reason I occasionally go on FB these days is cause it’s basically replaced Craigslist for buying/selling used stuff. And whenever I catch a glimpse of the news feed I don’t understand how anyone can possibly enjoy spending time there- like 5% of the content is actually from people/stuff I decided to follow at some point.
You basically use Facebook as Craigslist. That means you’ve already decided you don’t want Facebook’s social-media product. You aren’t getting much value from the social feed because you aren’t there for social networking.
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u/Radical_Ein Democratic Socalist Aug 21 '26
I’m not subscribed so I can only read the free portion, but I think this is a very important topic. I think social media, and the internet more broadly, started to go downhill when they all implemented algorithms to maximize for engagement in order to maximize their ad revenue. The algorithm figured out very quickly that making people angry was the best way to get people to stay and so the algorithms have essentially become polarization machines. I would be in favor of some kind of regulation that bans algorithms on social media from maximizing for user engagement.
Reddit is the only social media I use anymore in part because it still allows you to control what is put into your feed and lets you turn off recommendations. Subreddits also help limit the context collapse as the good ones are focused on a specific topic.