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Judge rules YouTube, Facebook and Reddit must face lawsuits claiming they helped radicalize a mass shooter | CNN Business (www.cnn.com)

submitted 8 months ago by btaf45@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] porksoda@lemmy.world 33 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

Back when I was on reddit, I subscribed to about 120 subreddits. Starting a couple years ago though, I noticed that my front page really only showed content for 15-20 subreddits at a time and it was heavily weighted towards recent visits and interactions.

For example, if I hadn't visited r/3DPrinting in a couple weeks, it slowly faded from my front page until it disappeared all together. It was so bad that I ended up writing a browser automation script to visit all 120 of my subreddits at night and click the top link. This ended up giving me a more balanced front page that mixed in all of my subreddits and interests.

My point is these algorithms are fucking toxic. They're focused 100% on increasing time on page and interaction with zero consideration for side effects. I would love to see social media algorithms required by law to be open source. We have a public interest in knowing how we're being manipulated.

[–] CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

YouTube does the exact same thing.

[–] Smokeless7048@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

thats why i always use youtube by subscribed first, then only delve into regular front page if theres nothing interesting in my subscriptions

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I used google news phone widget years ago and clicked on a giant asteroid article, and for whatever reason my entire feed became asteroid/meteor articles. Its also just such a dumb way to populate feeds.

[–] TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yo dawg, I heard you like asteroids. So I populated your entire feed with articles about asteroids.