- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.world
A slightly unusual video from the fantastic Technology Connections channel. It articulates a lot of my own thoughts on social media, “algorithms” and AI.
What surprised me the most was the statistic that only 3% of author’s views come from the subscriptions feed. This is wild to me because subscriptions are pretty much the only way I have ever used YouTube.
There is this interesting push and pull with algorithms, they need to show content users will engage with, but, their main value to the companies is that it allows them to easily manipulate what is seen.
They push people to hard they stop using the algorithm, but if they just let the algorithm act purely one what people engage with, then they can’t monetize it.
There is a third access of preventing people from going down self destructive rabbit holes, but they don’t care about that until people start talking about regulating them or start moving away.
That push and pull is exactly why they’ve been intentionally using them to rot people’s brains. The dumber and more apathetic you can make your users, the more you can monetize them, you first minimize the push so you can maximize the pull. This is not an accidental “quirk” of modern algorithms, it’s part of the design. Money must be maximized at all costs, including the mental health of the users and the stability of society. Money uber alles. The techbros will drive our society into the ground without a second thought if it makes them a few bucks richer. They’re not planning to stay here anyway. We are just a resource to them, and they will exploit us to the fullest to pursue their unachievable techno-utopia fantasies.