I enjoyed the video and in think he makes valid points. I was reminded in this video that if been seeing more content about missing the old internet a lot recently and his point about actively...
I enjoyed the video and in think he makes valid points. I was reminded in this video that if been seeing more content about missing the old internet a lot recently and his point about actively seeking information made me think about our current internet. Our current internet feels like its aggressively taking our attention and probably our critical thinking.
Piggybacking off of your comment to share a couple of the vectors I've been using to get back to the old internet. https://kagi.com/smallweb https://ooh.directory/ https://metafilter.com
Piggybacking off of your comment to share a couple of the vectors I've been using to get back to the old internet.
I was pretty surprised to hear that only 4% of people reach his videos from the subscription feed. It's how I watch 99% of my YouTube content. Pro tip: If you disable watch history YouTube will...
I was pretty surprised to hear that only 4% of people reach his videos from the subscription feed. It's how I watch 99% of my YouTube content. Pro tip: If you disable watch history YouTube will automatically disable the home screen and the YouTube Shorts screen (it will still show shorts from your subscriptions in your sub feed). This works across all apps (web, mobile, smart TV).
I think my internet diet of Tildes + HackerNews + YouTube/Nebula subs has unchained me from the algorithmic feeds.
I was very confused by that. What's the point in subscribing to anything if you don't use the subscriptions tab? Just increasing the chance the algorithm serves you their videos, by some unknown...
I was very confused by that. What's the point in subscribing to anything if you don't use the subscriptions tab? Just increasing the chance the algorithm serves you their videos, by some unknown amount?
I subscribe to creators I like because afaik having a higher subscriber count is good for them. But I never use either my home feed or my subscriptions tab; when I watch videos it's either from...
I subscribe to creators I like because afaik having a higher subscriber count is good for them. But I never use either my home feed or my subscriptions tab; when I watch videos it's either from search or cos it was linked from Tildes or a friend in Discord. Sometimes I also go directly to Michell Khare's channel and catch up on Challenge Accepted.
I never use the subscriptions feed, but I still get notifications for videos from creators I subscribe to and they almost always show up on the recommended videos. I watch a lot of YouTube videos...
I never use the subscriptions feed, but I still get notifications for videos from creators I subscribe to and they almost always show up on the recommended videos. I watch a lot of YouTube videos and the algorithm has become shockingly good at recommending me great content that I very much enjoy watching (usually things like TechnologyConnections and similar stuff haha)
I don't need to go to the subscriptions feed because the front page of the app/site basically functions as both a subscription feed and a discovery feed at the same time.
YouTube is the only algorithmic feed that I use, but I beat the crap out if it. They have a very useful "not interested" or "do not show me videos from this channel" feature that I use a lot. Any...
YouTube is the only algorithmic feed that I use, but I beat the crap out if it. They have a very useful "not interested" or "do not show me videos from this channel" feature that I use a lot.
Any time I see a thumbnail with someone's face in a shocked expression pointing at something, I block the channel without a second thought. Anything that doesn't seem interesting gets the "not interested" button.
That leaves the algorithm feeding me what amounts to a subscription feed plus occasional stuff that I did not know about such as MattBrwn doing hardware level hacking that I am genuinely interested in.
I am also willing to throw it away if it starts sucking, which is an important part of the process.
Same, there are of course arguments that algorithmic content is inherently bad and that relinquishing any control over the process of content selection is a bad idea. But when people claim that...
Same, there are of course arguments that algorithmic content is inherently bad and that relinquishing any control over the process of content selection is a bad idea. But when people claim that social media algorithms do a bad job of delivering content for them, I do wonder whether they're aware of and using the "Not interested" type of features. I use them a lot, and I find that at least on YouTube the home feed is mostly videos from my subscription or genuinely good recommendations from creators who are similar to those I'm subscribed too. Other social media algorithms are not necessarily as malleable as YouTube's though.
I'm sure a lot of people on here do, but I'm also sure a lot of people on here don't (we just don't talk about it as much š) I think as long as your cognizant of what you're consuming, and let it...
I'm sure a lot of people on here do, but I'm also sure a lot of people on here don't (we just don't talk about it as much š)
I think as long as your cognizant of what you're consuming, and let it serve your tastes and interests rather than dictating them; it's not much different than any other curated content platform. Not too dissimilar to reddit or even tildes.
Iāve used YouTubeās algorithmic home page exclusively for years now. My algorithmic feed was pretty much just a feed of my subscriptions, with a few extra creators thrown in. The algorithm seemed...
Iāve used YouTubeās algorithmic home page exclusively for years now. My algorithmic feed was pretty much just a feed of my subscriptions, with a few extra creators thrown in. The algorithm seemed very well suited to my use case. For YouTubers like Technology Connections, where I watch every single video as soon as it comes out, their videos show up on the home page immediately and stay there until I watch them. For YouTubers where I watched some of their more popular videos, but not all, it would surface a good selection of their videos in the home feed. It was also good about surfacing old videos, so even if I missed it when it first released, I would see it later.
For years now, I have had my account set to delete old watch history after (I think) 90 days. This seemed to help the algorithm be less sticky when I would accidentally start a video type I didnāt want in my feed. I subscribe to channels that I want to see again in the future, and I like almost every single video I watch. This seemed like the perfect mix of information to make the algorithm fantastic. Every few months, the algorithm would turn to shit for a week or two, I would start watching less YouTube, and it would fix itself again. I presume I was the target of an AB test or some sort.
That was until the start of this year. For some reason Google screwed up the algorithm this year and still hasnāt fixed it. It is recommending me almost exclusively stuff I have watched previously, or things I am not remotely interested in. In the past two months, I have used the Ā« donāt recommend channel Ā» feature on the Home Screen more than in all of my past YouTube watching. I am going to be checking out some of the recommendations in this thread, and maybe Iāll start ignoring the algorithmic feed.
The Subscription feed used to work when most people released once, maybe twice a week max Now itās just a ton of live videos, short 13 second bits, YouTube shorts and irrelevant crap from channels...
The Subscription feed used to work when most people released once, maybe twice a week max
Now itās just a ton of live videos, short 13 second bits, YouTube shorts and irrelevant crap from channels I subscribe to.
I'm not usually a fan of "old man yells at clouds" arguments, or people bemoaning new technology making everyone "lazy/complacent", but I still thought this was an interesting video with some...
I'm not usually a fan of "old man yells at clouds" arguments, or people bemoaning new technology making everyone "lazy/complacent", but I still thought this was an interesting video with some potential truth to it, and a worthwhile topic for discussion.
Great video, really eloquently explains why the feeling "the internet used to be better" goes deeper than just ads or SEO spam. Content being given to you is very different than you going to find...
Great video, really eloquently explains why the feeling "the internet used to be better" goes deeper than just ads or SEO spam. Content being given to you is very different than you going to find content. The pseudo-agency of a data trail feeding into a recommendation algorithm is good enough for most people to not examine the implications much more deeply, and it's increasingly clear how big of a problem this is. It goes beyond just a lifestyle choice of how people choose to spend their free time, social media platforms are exceptionally powerful tools for shaping public perception. We're seeing the consequences of this play out right now in the US.
Definitely a nitpick, and not the point of the example, but his "Google maps recommends I take a highly inefficient route to work, because it's 1 minute faster" example didn't ring true in my...
Definitely a nitpick, and not the point of the example, but his "Google maps recommends I take a highly inefficient route to work, because it's 1 minute faster" example didn't ring true in my experience. Google maps does a great job of showing me 3-4 different options when I'm selecting a route telling me the advantages of each one (something like shorter distance, better fuel economy, fewer/no tolls, or fastest time.) It also takes into account traffic conditions which I wouldn't be aware of and reroutes me accordingly very often. Nearly every time I decide that I know better than the GPS and take a route anyway, I regret it because I end up getting stuck in traffic or slowed down for some other reason.
My experience matches this in unknown territory, but from experimentation in areas I know well, I find the anecdote real. A brief example: Equidistant between two parallel roads, one at 35 mph and...
My experience matches this in unknown territory, but from experimentation in areas I know well, I find the anecdote real. A brief example:
Equidistant between two parallel roads, one at 35 mph and the other at 45 mph, it will send me on the 45mph road every time unless the destination is directly on the 35 mph road or there is a literal standstill like an accident. Even if it means crossing the 35 mph road later. The thing is, from local knowledge, the 35 mph road is faster overall as well as more efficient. Simply because the traffic flows at a smooth 35 instead of stop/go 45.
Another is that unless explicitly turned off, maps directions will consistently try to get me to use a toll road that costs $4 to save me 2-5 minutes on a 30 minute drive. This benefit is completely negated by a mildly congested traffic light feeding the toll road.
And what this tells me: The algorithm doesn't know what is best anywhere. It just is a damn fine alternative to 0 knowledge about a route. And an offline GPS will get you there within a margin of error without anything fancier than 'shortest route by distance' or 'fastest route by distance and speed limit'.
Realtime traffic data does make a huge difference in urban areas though. The problem being the huge privacy implications that accompany it. There is a reason Google does it best.
I think the creator makes some salient points. I agree that trying to search for what you want to see is good āexerciseā in trying to filter bad information from good information. I also believe...
I think the creator makes some salient points. I agree that trying to search for what you want to see is good āexerciseā in trying to filter bad information from good information. I also believe in the idea of āalgorithmic complacencyā; I think itās common to just kind of accept whatever the algorithm feeds you because it is easy.
However, Iām going to push back a bit on āthis is breaking our brainsā. I do not think the author makes a compelling argument that this is at all a new phenomenon. In fact, they briefly touch on the snarky āI googled itā response on forums, which I think is evidence for the opposite.
Someone with enough technical knowledge to join a forum on the early Internet still didnāt think to google something. If you assume the ācomplacencyā around searching for information is new, this should be really surprising, since youāve already conditioned on being able to access the Internet, use a web browser, find a forum, sign up for that forum, and post. Googling should be really easy.
I think humans, in general, tend to just gravitate towards what information is easy to access. In fact, I bet the algorithmic feeds led to increases in the userbase, because before those feeds, people who did not want to search would just avoid the platform entirely. Pre-algorithms, Youtube had substantially fewer users.
So, I donāt buy that algorithmic feeds are breaking our brains in the way the creator describes. Thereās probably strong arguments that social media is more harmful than the pre-Internet ways of wasting time (like watching TV on a channel or reading a magazine in your house or listening to the radio or just being bored), but that is pretty explicitly not the argument the author made: the comparisons being made are between pre- and post-algorithmic feeds online.
For those of us who do want to practice searching for information to satiate our curiosity, this video makes good points. I had already turned off cookies on Youtube (so every time I boot it up, itās just a search bar), left every other platform with algorithmic feeds, and taken other steps to mitigate this issue before watching the video. I hope the video inspires more people to take their steps. I just think the segment of the population who actually want to make that change are, and have always been, in the minority. The change the creator noticed, in my mind, is the remainder of people joining the Internet and the products responding accordingly.
I also doubt that the public at large is behaving any different...2014-2016 is more or less the inflection point where smartphone use surpassed desktop use for the Web, and it represents a great...
I also doubt that the public at large is behaving any different...2014-2016 is more or less the inflection point where smartphone use surpassed desktop use for the Web, and it represents a great many people coming online who otherwise did not make online activity a daily habit.
It used to be kind of a running joke online that people who worked in IT or were their extended family and friends' go-to "person who is good with computers" basically just knew how to use Google and search for and evaluate information to find likely answers. (Which is more a case of functional literacy and critical thinking ability than anything, much like the results of a certain 2016 Nielsen Norman Group study.)
And for every person like me, or my immediate family, who grew up reading books daily and only turning on the TV only to watch a show or two at the scheduled time, there were dozens who would idly flip through channels like a zombie, which is hardly any different than TikTok. (I find both physically uncomfortable and prefer to leave the room if someone is doing it.)
The typical person is more or less mentally the same as they have been for millennia, which is quite distressing for those of us who aren't like them. (Gestures broadly at all of recorded history.) They just have fancier tools they take for granted.
That's a good point! The chicken or the egg. Did the dumbed-down internet make people dumber, or is it just so dumbed down that even the very dumbest people are now able to use it? It's easy to...
That's a good point! The chicken or the egg. Did the dumbed-down internet make people dumber, or is it just so dumbed down that even the very dumbest people are now able to use it?
It's easy to forget that the user population of the modern internet is vast compared to the nostalgic days. There was a barrier to entry.
Anecdotally, I found myself itching to and actually checking my phone while at social gatherings a lot more when I was using reddit. Since stopping I am a lot less drawn into my phone. No offense...
Anecdotally, I found myself itching to and actually checking my phone while at social gatherings a lot more when I was using reddit. Since stopping I am a lot less drawn into my phone. No offense to Tildes, but itās is way less appealing for me at least (itās a feature, not a bug).
This is a good point - many people have always had a tendency to let other people do the work for them. Hence snarky websites like Let Me Google That For You. Or did anyone ever come across...
This is a good point - many people have always had a tendency to let other people do the work for them. Hence snarky websites like Let Me Google That For You.
Or did anyone ever come across ChaCha? I remember being baffled about why my younger sister and her friends (teenagers, maybe 2010 or so) would text ChaCha a question and then wait for a response instead of just googling it. Literally it was just asking someone else to Google it for them, but I guess it meant they didnāt have to bother evaluating sources.
I largely agree with the points made and personally I found that the best course of action is to not interact with these where possible. The mainstream information pipelines are very easy and very...
I largely agree with the points made and personally I found that the best course of action is to not interact with these where possible.
The mainstream information pipelines are very easy and very convenient to use but they almost never provide the tools to personally curate the experience in a transparent and useful manner and break out of the inevitable edge cases. For example search - the engines are extremely opinionated and if the query does not fall into what they expect they will simply present low accuracy and low quality results with extremely limited ability to influence them.
I would also like to point out a similar phenomena in a general interaction with computing technology. It is increasingly rarer that the sw is discoverable. If the handful of dumbed down settings and information presented are not what you need it is neccesary to already know where to look to get passable results.
I enjoyed the video and in think he makes valid points. I was reminded in this video that if been seeing more content about missing the old internet a lot recently and his point about actively seeking information made me think about our current internet. Our current internet feels like its aggressively taking our attention and probably our critical thinking.
Piggybacking off of your comment to share a couple of the vectors I've been using to get back to the old internet.
I was pretty surprised to hear that only 4% of people reach his videos from the subscription feed. It's how I watch 99% of my YouTube content. Pro tip: If you disable watch history YouTube will automatically disable the home screen and the YouTube Shorts screen (it will still show shorts from your subscriptions in your sub feed). This works across all apps (web, mobile, smart TV).
I think my internet diet of Tildes + HackerNews + YouTube/Nebula subs has unchained me from the algorithmic feeds.
I was very confused by that. What's the point in subscribing to anything if you don't use the subscriptions tab? Just increasing the chance the algorithm serves you their videos, by some unknown amount?
I subscribe to creators I like because afaik having a higher subscriber count is good for them. But I never use either my home feed or my subscriptions tab; when I watch videos it's either from search or cos it was linked from Tildes or a friend in Discord. Sometimes I also go directly to Michell Khare's channel and catch up on Challenge Accepted.
I never use the subscriptions feed, but I still get notifications for videos from creators I subscribe to and they almost always show up on the recommended videos. I watch a lot of YouTube videos and the algorithm has become shockingly good at recommending me great content that I very much enjoy watching (usually things like TechnologyConnections and similar stuff haha)
I don't need to go to the subscriptions feed because the front page of the app/site basically functions as both a subscription feed and a discovery feed at the same time.
Intriguing. I would have assumed most tilderidoos always disable any algorithmic personalisation completely, like me. I find it really uncanny.
YouTube is the only algorithmic feed that I use, but I beat the crap out if it. They have a very useful "not interested" or "do not show me videos from this channel" feature that I use a lot.
Any time I see a thumbnail with someone's face in a shocked expression pointing at something, I block the channel without a second thought. Anything that doesn't seem interesting gets the "not interested" button.
That leaves the algorithm feeding me what amounts to a subscription feed plus occasional stuff that I did not know about such as MattBrwn doing hardware level hacking that I am genuinely interested in.
I am also willing to throw it away if it starts sucking, which is an important part of the process.
Same, there are of course arguments that algorithmic content is inherently bad and that relinquishing any control over the process of content selection is a bad idea. But when people claim that social media algorithms do a bad job of delivering content for them, I do wonder whether they're aware of and using the "Not interested" type of features. I use them a lot, and I find that at least on YouTube the home feed is mostly videos from my subscription or genuinely good recommendations from creators who are similar to those I'm subscribed too. Other social media algorithms are not necessarily as malleable as YouTube's though.
I'm sure a lot of people on here do, but I'm also sure a lot of people on here don't (we just don't talk about it as much š)
I think as long as your cognizant of what you're consuming, and let it serve your tastes and interests rather than dictating them; it's not much different than any other curated content platform. Not too dissimilar to reddit or even tildes.
Iāve used YouTubeās algorithmic home page exclusively for years now. My algorithmic feed was pretty much just a feed of my subscriptions, with a few extra creators thrown in. The algorithm seemed very well suited to my use case. For YouTubers like Technology Connections, where I watch every single video as soon as it comes out, their videos show up on the home page immediately and stay there until I watch them. For YouTubers where I watched some of their more popular videos, but not all, it would surface a good selection of their videos in the home feed. It was also good about surfacing old videos, so even if I missed it when it first released, I would see it later.
For years now, I have had my account set to delete old watch history after (I think) 90 days. This seemed to help the algorithm be less sticky when I would accidentally start a video type I didnāt want in my feed. I subscribe to channels that I want to see again in the future, and I like almost every single video I watch. This seemed like the perfect mix of information to make the algorithm fantastic. Every few months, the algorithm would turn to shit for a week or two, I would start watching less YouTube, and it would fix itself again. I presume I was the target of an AB test or some sort.
That was until the start of this year. For some reason Google screwed up the algorithm this year and still hasnāt fixed it. It is recommending me almost exclusively stuff I have watched previously, or things I am not remotely interested in. In the past two months, I have used the Ā« donāt recommend channel Ā» feature on the Home Screen more than in all of my past YouTube watching. I am going to be checking out some of the recommendations in this thread, and maybe Iāll start ignoring the algorithmic feed.
The Subscription feed used to work when most people released once, maybe twice a week max
Now itās just a ton of live videos, short 13 second bits, YouTube shorts and irrelevant crap from channels I subscribe to.
I agree. Being unable to filter out shorts makes the subscription page really annoying.
I'm not usually a fan of "old man yells at clouds" arguments, or people bemoaning new technology making everyone "lazy/complacent", but I still thought this was an interesting video with some potential truth to it, and a worthwhile topic for discussion.
Great video, really eloquently explains why the feeling "the internet used to be better" goes deeper than just ads or SEO spam. Content being given to you is very different than you going to find content. The pseudo-agency of a data trail feeding into a recommendation algorithm is good enough for most people to not examine the implications much more deeply, and it's increasingly clear how big of a problem this is. It goes beyond just a lifestyle choice of how people choose to spend their free time, social media platforms are exceptionally powerful tools for shaping public perception. We're seeing the consequences of this play out right now in the US.
Definitely a nitpick, and not the point of the example, but his "Google maps recommends I take a highly inefficient route to work, because it's 1 minute faster" example didn't ring true in my experience. Google maps does a great job of showing me 3-4 different options when I'm selecting a route telling me the advantages of each one (something like shorter distance, better fuel economy, fewer/no tolls, or fastest time.) It also takes into account traffic conditions which I wouldn't be aware of and reroutes me accordingly very often. Nearly every time I decide that I know better than the GPS and take a route anyway, I regret it because I end up getting stuck in traffic or slowed down for some other reason.
My experience matches this in unknown territory, but from experimentation in areas I know well, I find the anecdote real. A brief example:
Equidistant between two parallel roads, one at 35 mph and the other at 45 mph, it will send me on the 45mph road every time unless the destination is directly on the 35 mph road or there is a literal standstill like an accident. Even if it means crossing the 35 mph road later. The thing is, from local knowledge, the 35 mph road is faster overall as well as more efficient. Simply because the traffic flows at a smooth 35 instead of stop/go 45.
Another is that unless explicitly turned off, maps directions will consistently try to get me to use a toll road that costs $4 to save me 2-5 minutes on a 30 minute drive. This benefit is completely negated by a mildly congested traffic light feeding the toll road.
And what this tells me: The algorithm doesn't know what is best anywhere. It just is a damn fine alternative to 0 knowledge about a route. And an offline GPS will get you there within a margin of error without anything fancier than 'shortest route by distance' or 'fastest route by distance and speed limit'.
Realtime traffic data does make a huge difference in urban areas though. The problem being the huge privacy implications that accompany it. There is a reason Google does it best.
I think the creator makes some salient points. I agree that trying to search for what you want to see is good āexerciseā in trying to filter bad information from good information. I also believe in the idea of āalgorithmic complacencyā; I think itās common to just kind of accept whatever the algorithm feeds you because it is easy.
However, Iām going to push back a bit on āthis is breaking our brainsā. I do not think the author makes a compelling argument that this is at all a new phenomenon. In fact, they briefly touch on the snarky āI googled itā response on forums, which I think is evidence for the opposite.
Someone with enough technical knowledge to join a forum on the early Internet still didnāt think to google something. If you assume the ācomplacencyā around searching for information is new, this should be really surprising, since youāve already conditioned on being able to access the Internet, use a web browser, find a forum, sign up for that forum, and post. Googling should be really easy.
I think humans, in general, tend to just gravitate towards what information is easy to access. In fact, I bet the algorithmic feeds led to increases in the userbase, because before those feeds, people who did not want to search would just avoid the platform entirely. Pre-algorithms, Youtube had substantially fewer users.
So, I donāt buy that algorithmic feeds are breaking our brains in the way the creator describes. Thereās probably strong arguments that social media is more harmful than the pre-Internet ways of wasting time (like watching TV on a channel or reading a magazine in your house or listening to the radio or just being bored), but that is pretty explicitly not the argument the author made: the comparisons being made are between pre- and post-algorithmic feeds online.
For those of us who do want to practice searching for information to satiate our curiosity, this video makes good points. I had already turned off cookies on Youtube (so every time I boot it up, itās just a search bar), left every other platform with algorithmic feeds, and taken other steps to mitigate this issue before watching the video. I hope the video inspires more people to take their steps. I just think the segment of the population who actually want to make that change are, and have always been, in the minority. The change the creator noticed, in my mind, is the remainder of people joining the Internet and the products responding accordingly.
I also doubt that the public at large is behaving any different...2014-2016 is more or less the inflection point where smartphone use surpassed desktop use for the Web, and it represents a great many people coming online who otherwise did not make online activity a daily habit.
It used to be kind of a running joke online that people who worked in IT or were their extended family and friends' go-to "person who is good with computers" basically just knew how to use Google and search for and evaluate information to find likely answers. (Which is more a case of functional literacy and critical thinking ability than anything, much like the results of a certain 2016 Nielsen Norman Group study.)
And for every person like me, or my immediate family, who grew up reading books daily and only turning on the TV only to watch a show or two at the scheduled time, there were dozens who would idly flip through channels like a zombie, which is hardly any different than TikTok. (I find both physically uncomfortable and prefer to leave the room if someone is doing it.)
The typical person is more or less mentally the same as they have been for millennia, which is quite distressing for those of us who aren't like them. (Gestures broadly at all of recorded history.) They just have fancier tools they take for granted.
That's a good point! The chicken or the egg. Did the dumbed-down internet make people dumber, or is it just so dumbed down that even the very dumbest people are now able to use it?
It's easy to forget that the user population of the modern internet is vast compared to the nostalgic days. There was a barrier to entry.
Anecdotally, I found myself itching to and actually checking my phone while at social gatherings a lot more when I was using reddit. Since stopping I am a lot less drawn into my phone. No offense to Tildes, but itās is way less appealing for me at least (itās a feature, not a bug).
This is a good point - many people have always had a tendency to let other people do the work for them. Hence snarky websites like Let Me Google That For You.
Or did anyone ever come across ChaCha? I remember being baffled about why my younger sister and her friends (teenagers, maybe 2010 or so) would text ChaCha a question and then wait for a response instead of just googling it. Literally it was just asking someone else to Google it for them, but I guess it meant they didnāt have to bother evaluating sources.
I largely agree with the points made and personally I found that the best course of action is to not interact with these where possible.
The mainstream information pipelines are very easy and very convenient to use but they almost never provide the tools to personally curate the experience in a transparent and useful manner and break out of the inevitable edge cases. For example search - the engines are extremely opinionated and if the query does not fall into what they expect they will simply present low accuracy and low quality results with extremely limited ability to influence them.
I would also like to point out a similar phenomena in a general interaction with computing technology. It is increasingly rarer that the sw is discoverable. If the handful of dumbed down settings and information presented are not what you need it is neccesary to already know where to look to get passable results.