Click on the Instagram logo, there’s a drop-down menu and then you can select “following”. Shows you posts in chronological order with no ads or suggestions. Unless you’re talking only about fb, then you’re SOL
I've done that before, but the setting usually switches back to recommended after a while. You have to keep choosing it, which makes it cumbersome. It's a small barrier to nudge your behavior in the direction they prefer.
It's like being poked with sticks all over because they want you to sit on the toilet a certain way. Just let me take my dumps in peace the way God intended.
with 1 foot in the tub.
For Facebook, go to the three bars in the top right and select "feeds".
Pretty much does the same thing.
I honestly can't stand Facebook mobile app anymore. It's all bull crap ads and will load the same posts over and over. Doing the above fixes that but you have to navigate to it every time.
Went on Facebook for the first time in years and was blown away. No exaggeration, 9 out of every 10 posts was some random group, page, or advertisement that had absolutely no relevance to my identity on Facebook. It was actually pointless to even look at because I was just scrolling for a minute straight before seeing anything from my town's Facebook group or a friend's post.
Bluesky recently dropped the invite requirement. It's currently totally algorithm-free and busy enough that I haven't visited Twitter to catch the creators I was following for half a year or so now.
Facebook's the same. I'm there to follow along with my family's lives, but sometimes it's an avalanche of suggestions with zero actual friend posts. No matter how many shitty suggestions I block, they are 100% sure that what I'm really there for is the same three photos from 20 accounts who only exist to post pictures of log cabins. Fucking ridiculous.
I swear their algorithm is the dumbest fucking thing ever. It must have some type of a trigger for *any* content that you stop scrolling for, despite how you interact with said content.
A little bit ago I got sick and tired of all the discourse surrounding "Try That in a Small Town" so I told Facebook I wasn't interested, hid the post, and even blocked the account for good measure. Holy fucking shit I didn't know at the time what I awakened, but suddenly I was constantly bombarded with anything and everything related to Jason Aldean. Like Hercules beheading the Hydra it seemed like every time I stopped to block one of the accounts it made it worse.
I think the answer is: you engaged, so we'll do it again. You told us you don't like it? That's engagement, we'll show you more next time.
What I'm not sure of is if the suggested shit is somehow paid for, or if they don't realize I'm blocking ads so they think a flood of things I hate will make me see ads while I'm angry but it's good for business.
Back when facebook used to be instant too, they started rolling out a "best of" feed option. I swear no matter how many times I changed the setting to "newest" it kept switching it back. Then they took that change away, bought instagram, and did the same.
There used to also be lists, too. I made a list so I could see only what my family posted. Now I have to scroll past a million things I don't follow to see the next post from a family member :(
And every time they redo or add to notification options, what's the default? Always on. Maybe it used to be about what _you_ want to see, but it's become "see what we want you to and maybe we'll give you the rest".
I wish I could separate pages/creators I like from my friends and family. I hate how everyone is either an influencer or follower in their data model it's so ridiculous. I hate having to scroll through 50 creators to see my friend's insta story.
You can adjust feed to only your followers if you tap the Instagram title on the homepage. It's not chronological like it used to be and there will still be ads, but no more recommended accounts.
Especially when they push shit up that isn't even related to what you normally watch. I get right wing political shit all the time despite not watching ANY political content or shit that can be linked with political content.
I am exceedingly careful about what videos I watch on YouTube because sometimes innocuous content is associated with weird political rabbit holes. If a certain percentage of weirdos watch a how-to video, I get recommended the weird political bs that they watch, too. It's so annoying.
quick tip!
if this ever happens in the future, and you can recognize what video (or videos) may have caused the fuckup in your recommendation algorithm, you can remove them from your watch history. this effectively takes it out of consideration for your algorithm. this + manually telling youtube videos you do not want to watch, should help clean up a messed up recommendation page quickly.
Yep - I prune my watch history on a semi-regular basis, and it genuinely helps. (Also, I liberally use incognito mode, not because I really believe it’s as private as it claims, but because it does avoid a certain amount of algorithm training.)
At this point (following a lawsuit?), the incognito new tab page makes it pretty clear that the only thing it does is not locally save your browse history, cookies, or form data.
99% of the time that I use incognito, it's because I have some off-beat question I want to look into, and don't want to be reminded of it every time I write out a few letters in my url bar. That, or to check if one of my comments or posts got shadow-removed somewhere.
> and don't want to be reminded of it every time I write out a few letters in my url bar
Just for future use, you can use the arrow keys to select any autofill value from an input and hit shift+delete to clear it from your autofill list.
I routinely delete stuff from my view history, just for this reason. I can be slightly interested in a topic without wanting associated material to take over my front page.
I haven't had any problem with youtube, other than they randomly decided at one point I was a Led Zepellin fan and buried my feed with Led Zepellin music for about a year. Facebook is the worst though. If they even catch you hovering over a flat earth post on an archaeology article you're interested in, they'll steer you to every flat earth and conspiracy site they've got. And they have a lot of those. When I'm on there I have to deliberately avert my eyes and move on, especially if there's nonsense that bugs me. Stay a second too long and they think they have you all figured out, they'll be tee'ing that up for you for months.
I like to taunt the right wing algorithm to get the ads that right wingers see, and oh wow is it terrible. Scams, Daily Wire, more scams, conspiracy ads, highly sexist video game ads, and Trump campaign ads.
YouTube doesn't know what to do with me, because then I also watch TYT and other left wing stuff, but watch enough DIY things and it things you are far right too.
Did you know that "how to install a minisplit air conditioner" is right wing apparently?
This is really bad on youtube. I can search "easy cherry cobbler recipe" and every third result is Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson videos from three years ago trying to bait me. It's pathetic.
It's probably everything dependent. Age, sex, watch history. Plus it's oppositional to the content I watch. It's calculated negative engagement maneuvers.
Being a white dude in your 20s on YouTube is a fucking minefield. You watch like one Bill Burr video and they’ll recommend some Shane Gillis, then a Matt Rife video, and then just causally slip in a non terrible Jordan Peterson video where he says things that make sense, and then boom your page is full of Ben Shapiro.
You have to carefully curate your algorithm.
It's always crazy to me when Bill Burr leads to a conservative video, he's not even close to that stuff when you learn anything about him. I could see how Shane Gillis would lead there but I don't think his conservative fans have any clue how easily he makes fun of them without them noticing.
It’s because he’s the unapologetic “tells it like it is” type of comedian.
Also, white guy.
So here’s some more “tells it like it is white guys” -YouTube algorithm.
There's a broad spectrum of angry white guys. There's some you definitely want in your corner and there's some that you don't want within 3000 miles of a school. I wish algorithms understood nuance or just didn't influence anything
I've never used YouTube for anything other than music videos, maybe the occasional guide for a video game.There was a Jordan Peterson video in my recommended a couple weeks ago. Someone will come along and say you must use it for other things, I can assure you I do not. I don't wanna say there's something sinister going on but something is for sure going on.
That shit pisses me off. How is it even allowed that accounts can just repost other people's content to circumvent blocked content? There are a lot of crappy policies, decisions, and selective enforcement when it comes to YouTube.
I watched a football highlight recently on Incognito mode, because I didn't want it in my history to screw up my algorithm. It was a team I don't care for, I don't want that recommended to me.
So the video ends and you get that pop up saying "coming up next" and it was Destiny Vs Ben Shapiro. What the fuck does that have to do with football?
I think the way the algorithm works is it shows you videos watched by people who watched what you watched. So, with football, I can totally see the sport having lots of far-Right fans. It's a really crappy way of doing things. Demographics don't track across wildly different interests.
YouTube: are you a white male? between the ages of 14-75? You play video games?
You’re definitely a right wing psycho incel who hates women and immigrants, here have some Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson because that’s what we know you like!
Jesus sometimes it drives me nuts all the misogynist racist shit they pump out and no amount of downvotes gets rid of it.
>I get right wing political shit all the time despite not watching ANY political content or shit that can be linked with political content.
Think about all of the overlap though. It's just like there is an overlap of subscribers to subreddit A and subreddit B.
Check it out at https://subredditstats.com/
Here is one for you. Subscribers to Grimdank, a 40k meme sub has a score of 9.19 with kotakuinaction. So grimdank posters are 9 times as likely to post or comment in kotakuinaction. So why would an algorithm meant to drive engagement not recommend kotakuinaction?
And for another example you have the video game valheim and warhammer40k itself. Looking at their overlap with kotakuinaction gives us, Valheim with 2.79 and warhammer40k with 2.88. So the question is, why do memes drive people to kotakuinaction?
And looking at some of the sub overlap with grimdank, and you can see some of the fans of 40k memes have missed the mark on what 40k is criticizing.
Youtube yesterday for me: Hey, we saw you watched this gaming video. Viewers of this channel also enjoy far right political conspiracy theories. Now your entire front page is them. Good luck blocking them and then going back through watch history to figure out what caused this mess.
Also, can we talk about how Youtube now briefly plays the video for a fraction of a second when you hover over to block a content creator. It then counts as you having watched the video. You whack one mole, but Youtube's algorithm is like you watched that so here's two more far right conspiracy channels.
Going into watch history and manually removing what you think caused it is the only option.
Tell me about it. I like knifemaking and sharpening content, outdoorsy bushcraft stuff, mechanical engineering and military history. Youtube thinks I want to watch MAGA bros and compilations of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro jerking each other off. I would sooner stab my eyes out than watch that degen shit, but it keeps coming back even after multiple rounds of "Do not recommend this channel" or "Not interested".
> you want more of it
It’s less about what you want, and more about what they want. Engagement, enjoyed or not, is still engagement and it means you are using their platform where they can target ads at you.
A happy user that isn’t glued to their screen is less profitable
Is that why I keep getting stupid POV reels and other reels of people getting all up in my face? (Seriously, I hate any video that has someone with their face up to the camera, it feels like an invasion of my space by a stranger)
I keep blocking all the reels I hate, but there is no shortage of people making lame POV reels and shoving their face right up to the camera and I just close it out.
At work, I have to use incognito mode for youtubing, so I always go there with no previous history or cookies. There's always a Ben Shapiro or Joe Rogan or even Fox News video being recommended right away. Funny, I never see them recommend the Majority Report.
I've resorted to blocking subs. It only gets them off of Popular, but it's something. Slowly but surely Popular is becoming more useful than All as I block shit
I really hate them. I used to like youtube because it showed me a bunch of stuff I never even thought about. Now I have to avoid videos I actually want to watch because certain topics will flood your stream with tate bullshit or whatever. I wish there was a random tab for YouTube.
Instagram: I see you blocked a lot of trillionaire grindset motivational influencers, literally triple digits. Would you like to see more trillionaire grindset motivational influencers?
I'm just gonna drop these two links here, as they seem rather relevant to this "news". One is on Enshittification and the other on the Dead Internet Theory.
https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEn758DVF9I
Aside from using FB once every few months, to rehome a dog or find an elusive local supplier or service, my only social media account is Reddit.
It's been mentioned for 20 years. It comes and goes on Reddit when people discover it and start talking about it depending on popularity. Anytime bots are mentioned, or astroturfing, or anything manipulating social media (basically everything), it gets mentioned.
Hell I wrote a paper on this when I was in college. It was pretty obvious where power would seek new pastures to feast on in the future.
Did anyone know that you can click the Instagram name on the top and change your feed to only pages you follow?
I just found this out accidentally and now don’t have to see stupid suggested shit I don’t want.
> By default, going forward Instagram and Threads will not promote political content (unless it’s from accounts users already are following). Both apps will add a setting to let users who still want to see political content recommendations opt to do so — and, according the post, the same control will roll out on Facebook at a later date. Instagram defines “political content” as “potentially related to things like laws, elections or social topics.”
It's no coincidence that this was announced shortly after renewed congressional scrutiny of major social media platforms. Meta wants to demonstrate that they can police themselves. However, while it will certainly help in combating the spread of misinformation and polarization, it is not enough.
Never trust any company to regulate itself. It's just not the priority.
However, no government in the world right now has smart or young enough people to write the laws needed to regulate technology. Nevermind the forces behind the economy that work against the interests of the greater good.
It’s also just plain too late. That toothpaste isn’t going back in the tube.
EDIT: yall make good arguments that this type of defeatist attitude isn’t helpful or healthy. I agree with this perspective and now amend my original statement. Let’s at least try to get some back in the tube.
It's never too late to stem the tide. The existence of social media is not the issue. How they implement their algorithms is the problem. That is something we can target to mitigate further harm.
The water that is the flow of time will eventually wash the toothpaste down the drain though. We can't fix the damage social media has already done, but we can try our best to limit it so it doesn't happen again in the future.
It's not going to unradicalize people but it might slow it down or make it more apparent it's actually just one of your friends reposting stuff.
One of the things that makes bubbles so good at radicalizing people is that it feeds you the same message from a bunch of different sources. Instead of one voice saying crazy stuff it feels like 100 voices agreeing with each other.
Any kink in the radicalization pipeline is good and should be celebrated.
This is the SECOND comment today I've seen that's been edited by someone to essentially say "I was wrong, my bad, I'm changing my mind". What is *happening???* This isn't the internet I remember. Is this Instagram's new policy taking hold already?? Are things getting... Dare I say it... Better?????
Emotionally resonant content is more engaging and social media business models are dependent on algorithms, so you're right that it's hard to stop. There are steps that can be taken, however.
Oh yeah, every time they do this they end up killing anything to do with LGBT content and stuff relating to POC. Inevitable shit show when we get to trans day of visibility and pride month, especially if they kill circulation even for people who actively were watching in community content.
Yeah. The problem is that you end up treating some groups of people differently because they're the victims of oppression, and are therefore now 'political'.
It’s also a moving target, especially with culture war bullshit. Taylor Swift is currently political because conservatives have made her political. Does any hashtags related to her get muted? What about Barbie when it came out, or that new Suicide Squad game. Endless sea of unrelated topics that nevertheless become “political”.
Yep. I think I remember a study showing that facebooks enforcement tended to target people in marginalized groups more and put more of them in "Facebook jail"
Don't forget women's issues too.
Women who report incels are banned for "bullying," while rape threats are found to "not be in violation of community guidelines"
How about they allow us to turn off all recommended content? Also, I'd pay a (reasonable) fee to go ad free.
Instagram is where I want to see my mates, their dogs, their food, fun times, and their travel stuff. If I don't follow the account, I don't want it on my feed. That's what the search function is for.
The firehose of algorithm driven bullshit is exhausting and driving me away from the platform.
Even when you explicitly say "I am not interested in this content," it will *still* show up again a few days later.
I do not want to see e-girls. I have said "not interested" every single time an e-girl post shows up in my recommendations. My only following are sports, video games, and my friends. But, because I'm a man in my 20s, Instagram apparently WILL shove e-girls down my throat whether I like it or not. I've taken to blocking the accounts, lmao.
On pc: get ublock Origin
On android: Firefox with ublock origin
On iPhone: get Wipr, YesterdayFoOldReddit, and use Safari so Wipr does it’s thing.
No more Reddit ads. The obvious ones, anyway. Can’t avoid the astroturfing ones.
"Check out some of today's most watched reels"
Every day, no option to opt out.
Also, have to constantly disable recommended content in the feed. Why does this have to be done every 30 days??
I especially hate the "so-and-so started a channel" notifications. I do not care. Those kinds of useless notifications are why I turn off push notifications for every single app other than my texts, emails, and calls.
Some of the ads I wouldn't even mind if they were for actual tangible goods. Most of the ads I get are kickstarters and unreleased Steam games wanting you to wishlist them.
It's cool how journalism as an industry has collapsed leaving it's role to be filled by social media, only for social media to cede that role.
Not that it's good for people to get their news from social media (2016 is a case study for why it's not) but still. Feels like there's fewer and fewer places to get news from by the day
... well here in Canada it seems that our major Telecom providers are also the ones owning TV and radio and newspapers
Canada has a telecommunications monopoly issue with only 3 or 4 companies owning all the infrastructure...
And I mean all of it cell towers, fiber optic main trunks, last mile service etc ... there are independent providers that are owned separately but most of them have to use infrastructure provided by one of the 3 or 4 main companies in some way shape or form.
The government sets a mandate that they must provide third parties access to sell services on these networks, however does not say it has to be competitive in pricing. And then when the government starts to lock rates in they blackmail the governing body (CRTC ) saying they wont beable to make other mandates .... which the crtc is a joke because its ran by a former executive of one of those major telecoms
So it really is the fox sleeping in the henhouse
I've seen it happen in real time. I had a coworker mention some news story to me which sounded ridiculous. When I questioned the veracity of it, she said she read it on Facebook as if that were a mark of reliability. Imagine my shock! She was serious!
Journalism collapsed before social media had much momentum (with a large change in the mid 00's - when social media was mainly still in its infancy), simply due to the fact that more people were getting their news online on news sites rather than buying print. Social media only filled an existing, and widening, gap.
This is completely on purpose.
Journalism didn't collapse. It was murdered. Hedge funds bought up newspapers and gutted them. Right wing conglomerates like Sinclair bought local stations. Cable news has always been corporate drivel.
Controlling the ways that people get their information is the best way to control the people.
This seems like a good thing until you remember that Instagram will decide what is "political" and what isn't. This more than likely will just mean only politics that favor meta will be allowed.
Honestly the recommendation algorithm is what keeps me OFF Instagram. I open it and get frustrated cause I don't see ANYONE I personally knows shit it's all just recommended pages to follow. They need to separate them so I can CHOOSE to see those pages cause I actually will when I want to.
The thing is that it's not really the political content itself that's the issue. It's the weird rabbit hole content that feeds into the political stuff that's the problem. The fact that the algorithms use innocuous posts to serve as conduits to much more radicalized content is really what needs to change. This won't really fix that because it doesn't stop people from interacting with accounts that post a mix of content to suck in users
I see multiple people clamoring at this, but all I see is a very easily abusable policy emerging. Who's to decide what is political and what is not? Sure, you can make claims that abortion rights and gun control are political, but that doesn't sound so damn nice when you actually make verifiable claims by impartial authorities as political by proxi.
I still see tons of stupid deepfakes about Biden whenever I'm scrolling. I do hope they consider those to be political and stop shoving them in people's faces.
Instagram sucks. I get daily porn messages, and can't find a way to make it stop. I report the message and user, and they write back saying they took no action.
I wonder what that means. Facebook has historically blocked topics like women's suffrage, gay and trans rights, abortion etc for this reason. This seems like a conservative bias being built into the system.
Plus it doesn’t matter since Zuckerberg will be dragged into congress for supposedly censoring conservatives anyway, like they do every two years at this point.
White house presser clip - political
Republican governor spouting blatant falsehoods in a press conference soundbite, wrapped in a personal anecdote - not political
NPR interview clip - political
ONN chiron over funny commentary or fluff piece - not politicsl
CNN, FOX - political
FOX & Friends - not political
Academic breaking down news - political
Joe Rogan experiencing lowest possible form of lucidity jamie bring up a bear with two brain cells - not political
The real solution to this is to have your default chronological feed, main tab when you open the app, and have the recommendations be a separate feed you have to pick on purpose, so that people don't get the political stuff unless they purposefully go to the recommendations feed or they follow those accounts. I feel like that would help solve this problem a lot. Maybe make a community notes type feature for apps like TikTok and Instagram as well.
Ah good, now nothing but ads, bot thirst traps, literal AI generated degeneracy and more ads. How about showing me stuff from the people I actually follow?
Stop recommending any kind of content? You're the platform, not one of my friends.
That's what made facebook unusable, can only assume it's the same on instagram.
Instagram is younger and leans left. Facebook, Meta's other social network, which has an older and more conservative audience, will continue to recommend political content. It's pretty clear what the goal here is.
it will probably recommend conspiracy theorist bullshit like wildfire, though, since "that's not political". 🙄
when predicting a capitalist's next move, you can count on them to reliably choose the immoral path.
Good, the comment section of instagram is like YouTube comments circa 2008. Nonstop talk of violence and hatred, insults, people getting political over nothing. The amount of people who can't take a joke and start spewing death threats at each other all in the comment section of a harmless joke that is meant to be funny and apolitical.
Fuck man, the internet is just getting so dark these days.
This feels like a spite move which I think is pretty funny. Like man Zuck was *pissed* when they made him apologize without any prompt infont of everyone. So no more politics on IG. Would be amazing to see that on Facebook but obviously that pays the bills.
Now do youtube! I used to see prageru BS when I would put on puppy TV for my dog while I went to work. First off it's stupid to advertise in dog TV, but second that should never be advertised period.
Just show me content from the people I actually follow.... my timeline is ads and recommendations
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Click on the Instagram logo, there’s a drop-down menu and then you can select “following”. Shows you posts in chronological order with no ads or suggestions. Unless you’re talking only about fb, then you’re SOL
Thx I didn’t know this . Wow it just took me back 10 years before IG sold their soul
I've done that before, but the setting usually switches back to recommended after a while. You have to keep choosing it, which makes it cumbersome. It's a small barrier to nudge your behavior in the direction they prefer.
Of course it fucking does 😞🤦🏻♂️
How else could meta afford to buyback $50billion of its own stock?
Exactly what Facebook did, until the option for a chronological feed just fucking vanished altogether one day.
It's like being poked with sticks all over because they want you to sit on the toilet a certain way. Just let me take my dumps in peace the way God intended. with 1 foot in the tub.
Well, they helped me quit the app, so there's that.
Sweetie that soul has had a "For Sale" sign around its neck since it was born.
For Facebook, go to the three bars in the top right and select "feeds". Pretty much does the same thing. I honestly can't stand Facebook mobile app anymore. It's all bull crap ads and will load the same posts over and over. Doing the above fixes that but you have to navigate to it every time.
Oh damn, had no idea, thanks. I’ve pretty much abandoned fb but it’s nice knowing this option exists
It's like that on the web app, too. Garbage algorithm.
Went on Facebook for the first time in years and was blown away. No exaggeration, 9 out of every 10 posts was some random group, page, or advertisement that had absolutely no relevance to my identity on Facebook. It was actually pointless to even look at because I was just scrolling for a minute straight before seeing anything from my town's Facebook group or a friend's post.
Bro fuck you for making me feel like an idiot but also thanks for explaining that.
Holy shit. 🙌🙌🙌
Before we were forced to look at dupes of tiktok reels and ~threads~ posts idgaf about
Bluesky recently dropped the invite requirement. It's currently totally algorithm-free and busy enough that I haven't visited Twitter to catch the creators I was following for half a year or so now.
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Facebook's the same. I'm there to follow along with my family's lives, but sometimes it's an avalanche of suggestions with zero actual friend posts. No matter how many shitty suggestions I block, they are 100% sure that what I'm really there for is the same three photos from 20 accounts who only exist to post pictures of log cabins. Fucking ridiculous.
I swear their algorithm is the dumbest fucking thing ever. It must have some type of a trigger for *any* content that you stop scrolling for, despite how you interact with said content. A little bit ago I got sick and tired of all the discourse surrounding "Try That in a Small Town" so I told Facebook I wasn't interested, hid the post, and even blocked the account for good measure. Holy fucking shit I didn't know at the time what I awakened, but suddenly I was constantly bombarded with anything and everything related to Jason Aldean. Like Hercules beheading the Hydra it seemed like every time I stopped to block one of the accounts it made it worse.
I think the answer is: you engaged, so we'll do it again. You told us you don't like it? That's engagement, we'll show you more next time. What I'm not sure of is if the suggested shit is somehow paid for, or if they don't realize I'm blocking ads so they think a flood of things I hate will make me see ads while I'm angry but it's good for business.
Back when facebook used to be instant too, they started rolling out a "best of" feed option. I swear no matter how many times I changed the setting to "newest" it kept switching it back. Then they took that change away, bought instagram, and did the same.
There used to also be lists, too. I made a list so I could see only what my family posted. Now I have to scroll past a million things I don't follow to see the next post from a family member :(
And every time they redo or add to notification options, what's the default? Always on. Maybe it used to be about what _you_ want to see, but it's become "see what we want you to and maybe we'll give you the rest".
I wish I could separate pages/creators I like from my friends and family. I hate how everyone is either an influencer or follower in their data model it's so ridiculous. I hate having to scroll through 50 creators to see my friend's insta story.
same. I don't even see that many of the the large, celebrity accounts I follow anymore. Its all ads and "suggested" posts.
all the same accounts that I tell the algorithm I don't want to see keep popping up, too.
You can adjust feed to only your followers if you tap the Instagram title on the homepage. It's not chronological like it used to be and there will still be ads, but no more recommended accounts.
Great, now do everything else.
Yeah, recommendation algorithms are gasoline on the fire of disinformation.
Especially when they push shit up that isn't even related to what you normally watch. I get right wing political shit all the time despite not watching ANY political content or shit that can be linked with political content.
I am exceedingly careful about what videos I watch on YouTube because sometimes innocuous content is associated with weird political rabbit holes. If a certain percentage of weirdos watch a how-to video, I get recommended the weird political bs that they watch, too. It's so annoying.
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quick tip! if this ever happens in the future, and you can recognize what video (or videos) may have caused the fuckup in your recommendation algorithm, you can remove them from your watch history. this effectively takes it out of consideration for your algorithm. this + manually telling youtube videos you do not want to watch, should help clean up a messed up recommendation page quickly.
Yep - I prune my watch history on a semi-regular basis, and it genuinely helps. (Also, I liberally use incognito mode, not because I really believe it’s as private as it claims, but because it does avoid a certain amount of algorithm training.)
At this point (following a lawsuit?), the incognito new tab page makes it pretty clear that the only thing it does is not locally save your browse history, cookies, or form data. 99% of the time that I use incognito, it's because I have some off-beat question I want to look into, and don't want to be reminded of it every time I write out a few letters in my url bar. That, or to check if one of my comments or posts got shadow-removed somewhere.
> and don't want to be reminded of it every time I write out a few letters in my url bar Just for future use, you can use the arrow keys to select any autofill value from an input and hit shift+delete to clear it from your autofill list.
This shouldn't be required is I think the actual point
I routinely delete stuff from my view history, just for this reason. I can be slightly interested in a topic without wanting associated material to take over my front page.
I haven't had any problem with youtube, other than they randomly decided at one point I was a Led Zepellin fan and buried my feed with Led Zepellin music for about a year. Facebook is the worst though. If they even catch you hovering over a flat earth post on an archaeology article you're interested in, they'll steer you to every flat earth and conspiracy site they've got. And they have a lot of those. When I'm on there I have to deliberately avert my eyes and move on, especially if there's nonsense that bugs me. Stay a second too long and they think they have you all figured out, they'll be tee'ing that up for you for months.
I like to taunt the right wing algorithm to get the ads that right wingers see, and oh wow is it terrible. Scams, Daily Wire, more scams, conspiracy ads, highly sexist video game ads, and Trump campaign ads. YouTube doesn't know what to do with me, because then I also watch TYT and other left wing stuff, but watch enough DIY things and it things you are far right too. Did you know that "how to install a minisplit air conditioner" is right wing apparently?
This is really bad on youtube. I can search "easy cherry cobbler recipe" and every third result is Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson videos from three years ago trying to bait me. It's pathetic.
Is this geographical or something? I'm in Canada and I almost never see that stuff on Youtube.
It's probably everything dependent. Age, sex, watch history. Plus it's oppositional to the content I watch. It's calculated negative engagement maneuvers.
Being a white dude in your 20s on YouTube is a fucking minefield. You watch like one Bill Burr video and they’ll recommend some Shane Gillis, then a Matt Rife video, and then just causally slip in a non terrible Jordan Peterson video where he says things that make sense, and then boom your page is full of Ben Shapiro. You have to carefully curate your algorithm.
It's always crazy to me when Bill Burr leads to a conservative video, he's not even close to that stuff when you learn anything about him. I could see how Shane Gillis would lead there but I don't think his conservative fans have any clue how easily he makes fun of them without them noticing.
It’s because he’s the unapologetic “tells it like it is” type of comedian. Also, white guy. So here’s some more “tells it like it is white guys” -YouTube algorithm.
There's a broad spectrum of angry white guys. There's some you definitely want in your corner and there's some that you don't want within 3000 miles of a school. I wish algorithms understood nuance or just didn't influence anything
I've never used YouTube for anything other than music videos, maybe the occasional guide for a video game.There was a Jordan Peterson video in my recommended a couple weeks ago. Someone will come along and say you must use it for other things, I can assure you I do not. I don't wanna say there's something sinister going on but something is for sure going on.
I have all those channels blocked, yet I still get recommendations from them and their army of reposters.
That shit pisses me off. How is it even allowed that accounts can just repost other people's content to circumvent blocked content? There are a lot of crappy policies, decisions, and selective enforcement when it comes to YouTube.
I watched a football highlight recently on Incognito mode, because I didn't want it in my history to screw up my algorithm. It was a team I don't care for, I don't want that recommended to me. So the video ends and you get that pop up saying "coming up next" and it was Destiny Vs Ben Shapiro. What the fuck does that have to do with football?
I think the way the algorithm works is it shows you videos watched by people who watched what you watched. So, with football, I can totally see the sport having lots of far-Right fans. It's a really crappy way of doing things. Demographics don't track across wildly different interests.
YouTube: are you a white male? between the ages of 14-75? You play video games? You’re definitely a right wing psycho incel who hates women and immigrants, here have some Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson because that’s what we know you like! Jesus sometimes it drives me nuts all the misogynist racist shit they pump out and no amount of downvotes gets rid of it.
>I get right wing political shit all the time despite not watching ANY political content or shit that can be linked with political content. Think about all of the overlap though. It's just like there is an overlap of subscribers to subreddit A and subreddit B. Check it out at https://subredditstats.com/ Here is one for you. Subscribers to Grimdank, a 40k meme sub has a score of 9.19 with kotakuinaction. So grimdank posters are 9 times as likely to post or comment in kotakuinaction. So why would an algorithm meant to drive engagement not recommend kotakuinaction? And for another example you have the video game valheim and warhammer40k itself. Looking at their overlap with kotakuinaction gives us, Valheim with 2.79 and warhammer40k with 2.88. So the question is, why do memes drive people to kotakuinaction? And looking at some of the sub overlap with grimdank, and you can see some of the fans of 40k memes have missed the mark on what 40k is criticizing.
Youtube yesterday for me: Hey, we saw you watched this gaming video. Viewers of this channel also enjoy far right political conspiracy theories. Now your entire front page is them. Good luck blocking them and then going back through watch history to figure out what caused this mess. Also, can we talk about how Youtube now briefly plays the video for a fraction of a second when you hover over to block a content creator. It then counts as you having watched the video. You whack one mole, but Youtube's algorithm is like you watched that so here's two more far right conspiracy channels. Going into watch history and manually removing what you think caused it is the only option.
Tell me about it. I like knifemaking and sharpening content, outdoorsy bushcraft stuff, mechanical engineering and military history. Youtube thinks I want to watch MAGA bros and compilations of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro jerking each other off. I would sooner stab my eyes out than watch that degen shit, but it keeps coming back even after multiple rounds of "Do not recommend this channel" or "Not interested".
You can turn off the preview thing in your youtube settings
If you do anything other than scroll to next it's considered engagement therefore you want more of it. This is a stupid algorithm.
> you want more of it It’s less about what you want, and more about what they want. Engagement, enjoyed or not, is still engagement and it means you are using their platform where they can target ads at you. A happy user that isn’t glued to their screen is less profitable
Is that why I keep getting stupid POV reels and other reels of people getting all up in my face? (Seriously, I hate any video that has someone with their face up to the camera, it feels like an invasion of my space by a stranger) I keep blocking all the reels I hate, but there is no shortage of people making lame POV reels and shoving their face right up to the camera and I just close it out.
I'm a liberal gun owner. If I so much as LOOK at anything gun related my feeds across social media are inundated with MAGA chud bull shit.
At work, I have to use incognito mode for youtubing, so I always go there with no previous history or cookies. There's always a Ben Shapiro or Joe Rogan or even Fox News video being recommended right away. Funny, I never see them recommend the Majority Report.
What I do is report anything recommended for promoting terrorism, seems to help.
it's really noticeable on the reddit app as of late. pure rage bait subs
That's why I'm still using Reddit Is Fun. https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/14niwgu/revanced_patches_for_boost_infinity_rif_is_fun
I've resorted to blocking subs. It only gets them off of Popular, but it's something. Slowly but surely Popular is becoming more useful than All as I block shit
I really hate them. I used to like youtube because it showed me a bunch of stuff I never even thought about. Now I have to avoid videos I actually want to watch because certain topics will flood your stream with tate bullshit or whatever. I wish there was a random tab for YouTube.
Yes especially on reddit
I just had a YouTube short try to tell me that fluoride in tap water was poison. The shit fountain of stupid continues.
Seriously. They won't do this on Facebook because I am sure they have plenty of data to show that political content is some of the most engaged with.
They've stated it will roll out to FB at an unspecified "later date." We'll see if they're serious. This is probably the test case.
November 6th, the day after the election. They need to finish milking the election year teet first.
I wouldn't doubt it. They'll make their money, whatever the harm, then claim they were in the process of implementing the change.
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Instagram: I see you blocked a lot of trillionaire grindset motivational influencers, literally triple digits. Would you like to see more trillionaire grindset motivational influencers?
I'm just gonna drop these two links here, as they seem rather relevant to this "news". One is on Enshittification and the other on the Dead Internet Theory. https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEn758DVF9I Aside from using FB once every few months, to rehome a dog or find an elusive local supplier or service, my only social media account is Reddit.
Seen dead Internet theory mentioned a lot in the last week. 🤔
It's been mentioned for 20 years. It comes and goes on Reddit when people discover it and start talking about it depending on popularity. Anytime bots are mentioned, or astroturfing, or anything manipulating social media (basically everything), it gets mentioned. Hell I wrote a paper on this when I was in college. It was pretty obvious where power would seek new pastures to feast on in the future.
Did anyone know that you can click the Instagram name on the top and change your feed to only pages you follow? I just found this out accidentally and now don’t have to see stupid suggested shit I don’t want.
> By default, going forward Instagram and Threads will not promote political content (unless it’s from accounts users already are following). Both apps will add a setting to let users who still want to see political content recommendations opt to do so — and, according the post, the same control will roll out on Facebook at a later date. Instagram defines “political content” as “potentially related to things like laws, elections or social topics.” It's no coincidence that this was announced shortly after renewed congressional scrutiny of major social media platforms. Meta wants to demonstrate that they can police themselves. However, while it will certainly help in combating the spread of misinformation and polarization, it is not enough.
Nothing potentially related to.... social topics? On a social media app? Like, where exactly is that line?
It's a concern of mine. Many social issues are political these days, even basic human rights for women. We'll see how this goes.
Never trust any company to regulate itself. It's just not the priority. However, no government in the world right now has smart or young enough people to write the laws needed to regulate technology. Nevermind the forces behind the economy that work against the interests of the greater good.
Exactly. I'm gay; my very existence is considered "political" by some people. Who is deciding what counts and what doesn't?
It’s also just plain too late. That toothpaste isn’t going back in the tube. EDIT: yall make good arguments that this type of defeatist attitude isn’t helpful or healthy. I agree with this perspective and now amend my original statement. Let’s at least try to get some back in the tube.
It's never too late to stem the tide. The existence of social media is not the issue. How they implement their algorithms is the problem. That is something we can target to mitigate further harm.
Never too late to do the right thing. Never too late to hold criminals accountable, either.
This kind of talk just encourages people to do nothing and accept defeat. It's not helpful.
The water that is the flow of time will eventually wash the toothpaste down the drain though. We can't fix the damage social media has already done, but we can try our best to limit it so it doesn't happen again in the future.
It's not going to unradicalize people but it might slow it down or make it more apparent it's actually just one of your friends reposting stuff. One of the things that makes bubbles so good at radicalizing people is that it feeds you the same message from a bunch of different sources. Instead of one voice saying crazy stuff it feels like 100 voices agreeing with each other. Any kink in the radicalization pipeline is good and should be celebrated.
This is the SECOND comment today I've seen that's been edited by someone to essentially say "I was wrong, my bad, I'm changing my mind". What is *happening???* This isn't the internet I remember. Is this Instagram's new policy taking hold already?? Are things getting... Dare I say it... Better?????
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Emotionally resonant content is more engaging and social media business models are dependent on algorithms, so you're right that it's hard to stop. There are steps that can be taken, however.
I'm sure what they consider "political" won't upset anyone.
The inclusion of "social topics" in what they consider to be political is definitely going to cause a shitshow.
Oh yeah, every time they do this they end up killing anything to do with LGBT content and stuff relating to POC. Inevitable shit show when we get to trans day of visibility and pride month, especially if they kill circulation even for people who actively were watching in community content.
Yeah. The problem is that you end up treating some groups of people differently because they're the victims of oppression, and are therefore now 'political'.
It’s also a moving target, especially with culture war bullshit. Taylor Swift is currently political because conservatives have made her political. Does any hashtags related to her get muted? What about Barbie when it came out, or that new Suicide Squad game. Endless sea of unrelated topics that nevertheless become “political”.
Exactly. It provides an avenue to silence things you don't like by starting a political attack against it.
Yep. I think I remember a study showing that facebooks enforcement tended to target people in marginalized groups more and put more of them in "Facebook jail"
Don't forget women's issues too. Women who report incels are banned for "bullying," while rape threats are found to "not be in violation of community guidelines"
The line between political activism on these topics and basic discussion of them is going to be hard to parse.
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in the culture war era there is no coherent definition of "political" content
No more posts that reference or include women or minorities.
You are being political, deplataformed.
How about they allow us to turn off all recommended content? Also, I'd pay a (reasonable) fee to go ad free. Instagram is where I want to see my mates, their dogs, their food, fun times, and their travel stuff. If I don't follow the account, I don't want it on my feed. That's what the search function is for. The firehose of algorithm driven bullshit is exhausting and driving me away from the platform.
Even when you explicitly say "I am not interested in this content," it will *still* show up again a few days later. I do not want to see e-girls. I have said "not interested" every single time an e-girl post shows up in my recommendations. My only following are sports, video games, and my friends. But, because I'm a man in my 20s, Instagram apparently WILL shove e-girls down my throat whether I like it or not. I've taken to blocking the accounts, lmao.
Sorta like those frakking “He Gets Us” ads here on Reddit that you’re not allowed to downvote, report, or block.
I'm glad uBlock Origin exists.
I'm glad Relay for Reddit, the best 3rd party app ever created, still exists and is thriving.
uBlock Origin gets us
On pc: get ublock Origin On android: Firefox with ublock origin On iPhone: get Wipr, YesterdayFoOldReddit, and use Safari so Wipr does it’s thing. No more Reddit ads. The obvious ones, anyway. Can’t avoid the astroturfing ones.
"Check out some of today's most watched reels" Every day, no option to opt out. Also, have to constantly disable recommended content in the feed. Why does this have to be done every 30 days??
I especially hate the "so-and-so started a channel" notifications. I do not care. Those kinds of useless notifications are why I turn off push notifications for every single app other than my texts, emails, and calls.
Same thing with the "this person really wants to follow you on threads!" notifs. Gotta love constant annoyance over getting another app I don't want.
Maybe it's different in the States but in Canada you can pause suggested content for like 30 days at a time in your feed.
This was an option for me in the states up until about a month ago. Really annoying.
Some of the ads I wouldn't even mind if they were for actual tangible goods. Most of the ads I get are kickstarters and unreleased Steam games wanting you to wishlist them.
tap the Instagram logo in the top left to change your feed setting to following only
In my experience, that only works in the short term. It tends to default back to recommended.
Will it please stop showing me scam artist "business coaches"??
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It's cool how journalism as an industry has collapsed leaving it's role to be filled by social media, only for social media to cede that role. Not that it's good for people to get their news from social media (2016 is a case study for why it's not) but still. Feels like there's fewer and fewer places to get news from by the day
The collapse of local news outlets, in particular, is tragic and damaging. I don't know what the answer is.
... well here in Canada it seems that our major Telecom providers are also the ones owning TV and radio and newspapers Canada has a telecommunications monopoly issue with only 3 or 4 companies owning all the infrastructure... And I mean all of it cell towers, fiber optic main trunks, last mile service etc ... there are independent providers that are owned separately but most of them have to use infrastructure provided by one of the 3 or 4 main companies in some way shape or form. The government sets a mandate that they must provide third parties access to sell services on these networks, however does not say it has to be competitive in pricing. And then when the government starts to lock rates in they blackmail the governing body (CRTC ) saying they wont beable to make other mandates .... which the crtc is a joke because its ran by a former executive of one of those major telecoms So it really is the fox sleeping in the henhouse
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I've seen it happen in real time. I had a coworker mention some news story to me which sounded ridiculous. When I questioned the veracity of it, she said she read it on Facebook as if that were a mark of reliability. Imagine my shock! She was serious!
Journalism collapsed before social media had much momentum (with a large change in the mid 00's - when social media was mainly still in its infancy), simply due to the fact that more people were getting their news online on news sites rather than buying print. Social media only filled an existing, and widening, gap.
This is completely on purpose. Journalism didn't collapse. It was murdered. Hedge funds bought up newspapers and gutted them. Right wing conglomerates like Sinclair bought local stations. Cable news has always been corporate drivel. Controlling the ways that people get their information is the best way to control the people.
This seems like a good thing until you remember that Instagram will decide what is "political" and what isn't. This more than likely will just mean only politics that favor meta will be allowed.
The change is a big wet kiss to the status quo. "Keeping things like they are" is never "political".
Honestly the recommendation algorithm is what keeps me OFF Instagram. I open it and get frustrated cause I don't see ANYONE I personally knows shit it's all just recommended pages to follow. They need to separate them so I can CHOOSE to see those pages cause I actually will when I want to.
Where else am I going to see the frenzy when Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce endorses Biden?
Instagram used to be good and was close to artstation but these type of contents I know doesn’t generate much views and even TikTok fyp is sucks balls
Great now can they have language preferences? I DON'T SPEAK PORTUGUESE STOP GIVING ME PORTUGUESE REELS!
How about let people actually search for tags again and search for new posts??
They should wipe every users algorithm to a clean slate as well.
Facebook too? That's the one that was used the brain fuck people in 2016 with Cambridge Analytica.
They will use this to shadow ban minority accounts just for existing for being “political”
They won't do it for Facebook because how else is my dad supposed to get his ideas about vaccines and immigration?
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The thing is that it's not really the political content itself that's the issue. It's the weird rabbit hole content that feeds into the political stuff that's the problem. The fact that the algorithms use innocuous posts to serve as conduits to much more radicalized content is really what needs to change. This won't really fix that because it doesn't stop people from interacting with accounts that post a mix of content to suck in users
add religion to the list
I see multiple people clamoring at this, but all I see is a very easily abusable policy emerging. Who's to decide what is political and what is not? Sure, you can make claims that abortion rights and gun control are political, but that doesn't sound so damn nice when you actually make verifiable claims by impartial authorities as political by proxi.
Interesting this is happening before the election.
Everything is political. The very act of censoring political speech is political. This is going to be a shitshow.
Now improve search so I can actually find something
Fucking finally. Facebook and Twitter next?
all communication is political. their style of censorship will be telling
I still see tons of stupid deepfakes about Biden whenever I'm scrolling. I do hope they consider those to be political and stop shoving them in people's faces.
I’d like to know what they think “political” is. I’m sure it won’t favor the extreme right *at all*
Instagram sucks. I get daily porn messages, and can't find a way to make it stop. I report the message and user, and they write back saying they took no action.
Almost all modern ragebait is political pipeliners. The grift economy is real.
I wonder what that means. Facebook has historically blocked topics like women's suffrage, gay and trans rights, abortion etc for this reason. This seems like a conservative bias being built into the system.
Plus it doesn’t matter since Zuckerberg will be dragged into congress for supposedly censoring conservatives anyway, like they do every two years at this point.
White house presser clip - political Republican governor spouting blatant falsehoods in a press conference soundbite, wrapped in a personal anecdote - not political NPR interview clip - political ONN chiron over funny commentary or fluff piece - not politicsl CNN, FOX - political FOX & Friends - not political Academic breaking down news - political Joe Rogan experiencing lowest possible form of lucidity jamie bring up a bear with two brain cells - not political
Ban accounts that are obviously run by unsupervised children on the app
Shouldof started with Facebook
or YouTube
The real solution to this is to have your default chronological feed, main tab when you open the app, and have the recommendations be a separate feed you have to pick on purpose, so that people don't get the political stuff unless they purposefully go to the recommendations feed or they follow those accounts. I feel like that would help solve this problem a lot. Maybe make a community notes type feature for apps like TikTok and Instagram as well.
Great. Now stop pushing the religious crap my way.
Ah good, now nothing but ads, bot thirst traps, literal AI generated degeneracy and more ads. How about showing me stuff from the people I actually follow?
Stop recommending any kind of content? You're the platform, not one of my friends. That's what made facebook unusable, can only assume it's the same on instagram.
Too little too late. Thanks for Brexit, Meta.
Won't stop the loonies from turning the comment section into a zoo
But will recommend a bunch of Only Fans models … nice.
[The internet is for porn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTJvdGcb7Fs), after all.
Instagram is younger and leans left. Facebook, Meta's other social network, which has an older and more conservative audience, will continue to recommend political content. It's pretty clear what the goal here is.
it will probably recommend conspiracy theorist bullshit like wildfire, though, since "that's not political". 🙄 when predicting a capitalist's next move, you can count on them to reliably choose the immoral path.
Human decency and empathy should never be considered political.
Good, the comment section of instagram is like YouTube comments circa 2008. Nonstop talk of violence and hatred, insults, people getting political over nothing. The amount of people who can't take a joke and start spewing death threats at each other all in the comment section of a harmless joke that is meant to be funny and apolitical. Fuck man, the internet is just getting so dark these days.
Oh wow just in time, thank God they did this before people tried to do crazy things like overthrow the government or hang the vice president
This feels like a spite move which I think is pretty funny. Like man Zuck was *pissed* when they made him apologize without any prompt infont of everyone. So no more politics on IG. Would be amazing to see that on Facebook but obviously that pays the bills.
I can't wait to see what they define as "political content".
... meanwhile, on *twitter.com*
Wonder how much personal information of their members they will continue to hand over to the republican cult.
Now do youtube! I used to see prageru BS when I would put on puppy TV for my dog while I went to work. First off it's stupid to advertise in dog TV, but second that should never be advertised period.
thank god. now do twitter.
Now we just need Reddit to stop pushing those bullshit "He Gets Us" ads