this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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Is manipulation a force?
No one forces you to engage in arguments on Reddit or Twitter. You have autonomy over who you interact with on both sites. You're not being forced or manipulated to do anything. If you engage in this these things people perceive as negative, it's because you choce to do it of your own free will.
No, it's because of your scrolling speed, pauses, engagements, updoots, downdoots. Everything you do is taken into consideration to update your feed with more stuff that you are likely to engage with. That's all.
And you're the one doing it all, not a computer. the computer is not that smart, you need to tell it what you want to see.
You're arguing that there's no algorithm that promotes content users interact with on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and so on? This has been proven repeatedly.
On Facebook, most people seem to think they get the feed in time-ordered manner, and that hasn't been true for a decade or more. For example, posts with pictures get promoted to be closer to the top of the feed. Crucially, posts with more interaction (replies, reactions, probably even reports) are also shown closer to the top of the feed, so the user is much more likely to see those when they load Facebook.
So, things that upset people will get a lot of interaction, and they show those at the top of the feeds, which generates even more interaction. So then the algorithms start looking for similar content that will generate the same type of interactions, to put that near the top of the feed, and next thing you know millions of people are worshiping the ground some idiotic politician walks on.
Sure, it's free will to respond, but the fact is that the users' feed is being curated, focused on whatever extreme thing generates reactions.