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Comment by diggan | Hacker News Reader

Any media pusher that decides the ranking of stuff will have the same bias in some direction. Only thing I can think of that could counter-act that is placing the ability to rank things at the hands of users, like Bluesky with the Feeds feature, or Mastodon that just flat out refuses to rank content at all.

At least then users can pick their own poison, rather than be force-fed one.

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Gosh you're totally right, the article has pitched this as a problem unique to Twitter, but of course Facebook and Tiktok et al have the same thing going on, with minor variations on the theme.

TikTok was always full-throated, immediate engagement fishing. You watched a video on [some thing] for 30 seconds, you were going to get fed a bunch of that right after.

Twitter used to soften the edge on this a bit; you engaged with a few [some thing] posts and you'd get 1 or 2 more over the next day. Now you can very quickly get into an infinite loop. The "algorithm" (and yes, I hate writing this) digs its claws in right after an engagement.

Facebook (for all it’s many problem) seems to have figured out that I don’t want to see politics. I think it is just generally not a site that people go to for that sort of thing.

Facebook shows me a lot of politics, some of it I find repugnant and much of that is clearly designed to troll. Interesting that your experience is so different.

FB also shows me a lo of pseudo-science, similar history, etc. because of my interests in the real things. It has recently taken to showing me pictures of Eastern Europe for no apparent reason.

I get some pseudo-science (but it is funny, ancient aliens and quantum bullshit), a little bit of politics (but like, links to the Atlantic or whatever, so nothing too offensive), and lots of gaming stuff.

Overall, I really do not like Facebook (I’m only on there because some relatives are). I just think their algorithm is somewhat effective. I think I’ve managed to get them to label me as somebody with strong political opinions but low emotional valence toward politics, by marking some political posts or pseudo-political posts as offensive to me, but never allowing political content to “dwell” in premium screen space in the app.

Edit: I say I think their algorithm is effective, although I should say, I’m pretty sure I did trick it. In fact I’m very concerned about politics but I make sure to only angstily read articles I disagree with in Firefox browser with lots of tracking protection on.

> Overall, I really do not like Facebook (I’m only on there because some relatives are)

Similar to me. Friends and relatives. Its also how the home education community in the UK communicates (I admin two groups, and that is my main reason for being on it regularly), an unfortunate reflection of the hold FB has on the demographic (middle aged because they are parents, mostly women because even in the 21st century men do not bring up kids).

> Gosh you're totally right, the article has pitched this as a problem unique to Twitter, but of course Facebook and Tiktok et al (...)

Why do you think this is relevant, if the subject is Twitter's algorithm?

Your comment reads like whataboutism.

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