An interesting take. Personally, as a professional who works in advertising, I study the algorithms used by social media and aside from Meta feeding into the toxicity of Conformation bias and echo chamber while supplying targeted ads, Twitter is equally guilty of using this horrendous business model. I've tested the way the algorithm works and it mirrors back tweets based on what your own tweets contain. Tweet comedy, you see more comedy. Tweet politics you see Politics. However ironically it usually slanted with more tweets from those you oppose. Which is definitely one way to get a person to turn to the darker side of their psychology. It creates a defensive mindset and amps up the aggression one feels towards others. This is further amplified with feeding of ads that are targeted. A pretty evil algorithmic set-up once you really analyze it.
It's only going to get worse on Twitter since it'll be turned into a free for all without any controls over disinformation or offensive distortions. Ultimately this will probably doom Twitter since only total sociopaths will want to be around all that toxicity.
Personally, I've been moving more and more over to Counter Social, which is a much friendlier space, free from advertising and where people are honestly, sane. Best of all they don't tolerate disinfo and hate speech. You have to play nice and have real discussions with people, like what social media should be.
I was not very familiar with Counter Social; I'll have to check it out. It's interesting that there's a real psychology behind the algorithms, for better or worse. I wonder how hard it is to "train" the algorithms to send you different info?
Yes it's is possible. To do my testing I had three different profiles on Twitter. One was my artist profile which stuck mainly to only art and comics related topics. It got fed almost only those topics. I have another that is used to on a wide variety of topics and it gets somewhat negatively slanted feedback. Then I have a third which was created just to opposed a local republican who is running for congress and that one sees almost 3/4 of its feed in opposing negative tweets teeming with lies and distortions.
Of course you can also control your feed through the various filters you set in your profile settings. I would suggest most people do that and also severely limit the amount of real data that you post about yourself on your profile. I also suggest that folks set the ad controls to also limit the amount of advertising that gets fed to them. It the only real way to limit the toxicity of Twitter.
Thankfully on Counter Social there's none of that malarky to worry about.
An interesting take. Personally, as a professional who works in advertising, I study the algorithms used by social media and aside from Meta feeding into the toxicity of Conformation bias and echo chamber while supplying targeted ads, Twitter is equally guilty of using this horrendous business model. I've tested the way the algorithm works and it mirrors back tweets based on what your own tweets contain. Tweet comedy, you see more comedy. Tweet politics you see Politics. However ironically it usually slanted with more tweets from those you oppose. Which is definitely one way to get a person to turn to the darker side of their psychology. It creates a defensive mindset and amps up the aggression one feels towards others. This is further amplified with feeding of ads that are targeted. A pretty evil algorithmic set-up once you really analyze it.
It's only going to get worse on Twitter since it'll be turned into a free for all without any controls over disinformation or offensive distortions. Ultimately this will probably doom Twitter since only total sociopaths will want to be around all that toxicity.
Personally, I've been moving more and more over to Counter Social, which is a much friendlier space, free from advertising and where people are honestly, sane. Best of all they don't tolerate disinfo and hate speech. You have to play nice and have real discussions with people, like what social media should be.
I was not very familiar with Counter Social; I'll have to check it out. It's interesting that there's a real psychology behind the algorithms, for better or worse. I wonder how hard it is to "train" the algorithms to send you different info?
Yes it's is possible. To do my testing I had three different profiles on Twitter. One was my artist profile which stuck mainly to only art and comics related topics. It got fed almost only those topics. I have another that is used to on a wide variety of topics and it gets somewhat negatively slanted feedback. Then I have a third which was created just to opposed a local republican who is running for congress and that one sees almost 3/4 of its feed in opposing negative tweets teeming with lies and distortions.
Of course you can also control your feed through the various filters you set in your profile settings. I would suggest most people do that and also severely limit the amount of real data that you post about yourself on your profile. I also suggest that folks set the ad controls to also limit the amount of advertising that gets fed to them. It the only real way to limit the toxicity of Twitter.
Thankfully on Counter Social there's none of that malarky to worry about.