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Comment by kiba | Hacker News Reader

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kiba·

It's time to let people choose their own algorithm and force upon the platforms a marketplace for algorithms.

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Maybe just ban algorithmic recommendations? And advertising too for good measure...

More seriously, the more I think about this issue, the less I believe it can be fixed by technical solutions.

There needs to be regulation so algorithms are turned off by DEFAULT for every user - with the option to turn on for those that want a dose of brainrot

Do you browse HN only with https://news.ycombinator.com/newest ? Or is the HN algorithm kosher in a way other algorithms aren't?

HN's algorithm is in fact kosher, because it's not personalized. On HN, arguing with people on topic X will not make you get shown even more articles on topic X to keep you engaged. Reddit-like platforms are similarly okay (you personalize your experience by subscribing) and short video platforms like Tiktok are the great evil.

Reddit “best” sorting is pretty much like instagram and TikTok now, have to make sure it on hot/top, otherwise it’ll show you “related” things from subreddits you never subscribed to.

This is a case of psychological exploitation - in a free market of algorithms the current dominant flavor on platforms would win for the majority of people. As unpopular as it may be in this forum the real solution here is government regulation as we need to work as a society to protect our brains from these exploits.

"Winning" in this context doesn't matter because people have the freedom to choose which algorithms they want to use.

Like in the same way that windows has "won" in that it has 99% of desktop market share yet I can still use Linux happily.

I don't want government regulation here for the same reason I don't want the gov to step in and tell Linux what regulations it has to follow

Pointless. 95% would stick to the default

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