Hacker News Reader

Comment by energy123 | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised there isn't a politician who makes this their brand. I would vote for them even if they didn't want to do anything else.

The politicians only talk about regulating content, instead of regulating the algorithm. An error across all dimensions - politically, pragmatically, legally.

I would do these 2 things:

(1) ban all recommendation engines in social media, no boosting by likes, no retweets, no "for you", no "suggested". you get a chronological feed of people you follow, or you search for it directly.

(2) ban all likes/upvotes showing up on public posts, to reduce the incentive for people to engage in combat on politically charged topics

No impact on free speech, everyone still has a voice. No political favoritism. No privacy violations.

I would bet only these tweaks will significantly reduce extremism and unhappiness in society.

View on HN

This is something I've personally explored and lightly researched. I think the general population generally prefers recommendation algorithms (they espouse how great _their_ for-you page is on tik-tok or how spotify suggests the best music).

You would also be combating against ad and social media companies with extremely deep pockets. You have to keep in mind that algorithmic sorting also would impact search engines like Google and a ton of shopping websites.

I personally think the way this has to be done is something more fundamental and "grassroots-like". Similar to how a significant chunk of the internet are against "AI content" I think that same group of people need to be shown that this algorithmic recommendation brainrot is impacting society considerably.

edit: To take this point further, as an American, I have been wondering why people would disagree on basic principals or what feels like facts. The problem is that their online experience is completely different than mine. No two people share an exact same home page for any service. How are you supposed to get on the same page as someone when they live in a practically different world than you?

> I think the general population generally prefers recommendation algorithms

Not really. It's a dopamine addiction, like a gambling addict 'preferring' that a casino is nearby. But they know it makes them miserable. That's why people would pay money to quit.

https://reporter.anu.edu.au/all-stories/would-you-pay-to-qui...

What other product would people pay to not use? Only products that harm you.

I'm counting on a European country or Australia to try first, where the social media companies don't have much influence.

I definitely don't disagree there! I think I am on the same page as you as far as goals. I just am unfortunately a bit more jaded and pessimistic about the unending reach of these platforms.

The timidity and lack of vision from politicians everywhere is a disgrace. All it would take is one successful case study in one country, and most other countries would follow.

> That's why people would pay money to quit.

That's not really what the survey said. In fact, it found that the overwhelming majority of users would pay good money to continue using those platforms.

> The answers suggest users value these platforms a lot, on average by US$59 per month for TikTok and $47 for Instagram. An overwhelming 93 per cent of TikTok users and 86 per cent of Instagram users would be prepared to pay something to stay on them.

$59/month was the average claim for how much they'd pay to stay on TikTok.

They even cite other studies that came up with similar numbers, so it's not a fluke.

The part about paying to be off of them was about a hypothetical scenario where everyone on their campus agreed to some deal where they all stopped using one of the platforms together at the same time.

That's how they arrived at those weird numbers for paying to quit as a group. Like all studies that ask hypothetical questions about how much people would pay for some outcome, the real world value is always less. When you start introducing impossible constraints like "everyone else would quit" it becomes even more disconnected from reality.

Given the makeup of the courts is the US, I can't help but imagine these hypothetical laws would be thrown out on first amendment grounds. Viz. "Our algorithm is our free speech"

Both 1 and 2 will simply incentivize people to make fake accounts or pay existing account holders to post for them.

I think 1 and 2 will destroy social media as a frenetic place where everyone is competing for attention. It will become boring without all the battles, pile-ons, gore and porn being shoved in your face. People will sometimes check in to see what Obama said. That's about it. At least that's my hope.

> (1) ban all recommendation engines in social media, no boosting by likes, no retweets, no "for you", no "suggested". you get a chronological feed of people you follow, or you search for it directly.

I always find these comments interesting on Hacker News. The Hacker News front page is a socially sourced recommendation engine which presents stories in an algorithmic feed, as boosted by likes (upvotes) from other users. The comment section where we're talking is also social at it's core, with comments boosted or driven down by upvotes and downvotes.

In your proposed regulation, are you really expecting that the Hacker News front page would go away, replaced only by the "new" feed? Or that we'd have to manually sign up to follow different posters?

If we have to sign up to follow specific posters, how do you propose we discover them to begin with?

Usually when I ask these questions the follow ups involve some definition of social media that excludes Hacker News and other forums that people enjoy.

the hn front page is the same for all users --- on ig, im happy to see my friends' posts, but i really dont need the slurry of palantir-chosen brainrot/racist reels interspersed in there, lol (and that applies to most social media).

> the hn front page is the same for all users

Yes, it's an algorithmic feed that treats all active users as your friends. Stories are still boosted by votes, sorted algorithmically, and ordered by an opaque algorithm. It would fall under the ban described above.

> on ig, im happy to see my friends' posts, but

Yes, but how would that work on HN? You see no stories until you start friending people? How would you discover people if recommendation engines weren't allowed?

i'd say it's less predatory for all users to have the same algorithm. maybe on HN, the userbase is small enough, and the articles generally focused enough, that it'd be less impactful were the algorithm somewhat divergent per user. but on other platforms, rabbitholes appear very quickly, and very inorganically. to be plain, i've liked a number of pro-palestine posts on instagram, and started getting very anti-semitic reels until i hit "not interested" a certain number of times. the algorithm is opaque, but also stupid, and motivated to aggravate me into commenting, scrolling more, etc., to view ads. i don't know if i have a way to categorize HN into "good" and ig/X/... into "bad", to be honest.

for what it's worth, discord doesn't really have a user algorithm to get people into certain servers, and yet people are readily radicalized on discord (especially to the far-right, in my experience), but obviously the way people interact on discord is different to social media.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com