> they think an algorithm can decide better what I want to see than me myself

I agree with your points, except I believe there is a limited role for algorithms that help users discover new things they might like but not know about. I prefer Spotify's approach, where there's a specific area of the app (a "Discover Weekly" playlist) that gets refreshed but not so often that it becomes a dopamine lever. Although that kind of recommendation algorithm can't seem to handle multifaceted "loves rap but also renaissance music" users' tastes very well yet—in that regard Pandora's separate stations were better.

I've never seen an algorithm better than Pandora's recommendations (back around 2011 when I used to listen daily). I found so much music that I still love to this day because of how "smart" that thing was/is.

Agreed. That's probably because of just how much manual work went into it:

"Each song [representative of other songs in its group] is analyzed by a musician in a process that takes 20 to 30 minutes per song. Ten percent of songs are analyzed by more than one musician to ensure conformity with the in-house standards and statistical reliability." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Genome_Project

YouTube’s used to be really excellent. I discovered so much good music when it seemed to work by automatically cueing songs or videos that other people who enjoyed the current video had enjoyed as well. They seemed to make a change a couple years ago to cue items I had previously watched instead. So now, instead of fresh and interesting items relevant to my tastes, it just plays things I’m already familiar with.

Pandora, if I'm remembering correctly, also has a feature that Spotify lacks, which is to say "I don't like this" for a piece that it chooses. Although I couldn't say how much that influenced its later choices, it feels better as a user to be able to convey it.

I know for several of my "stations", they kept trying to suggest Coldplay. I'd constantly give them the thumbs down as I didn't feel Coldplay matched what I was going for. It didn't seem to affect their later suggestions.

Yeah Facebook was great back in 2006 when you only really had your friends on there.

I think the real downfall was not that they added the timeline, it's that it's impolite to not accept friend requests from e.g. coworkers or relatives that you know but don't really care about.

And then you end up with a news feed full of people you don't care about. I think by the time they added "unfollow" options everybody had moved to WhatsApp where conversations are between 15 people you know quite well rather than 300 people you met once.

I have no idea how they can fix that, or even how they could have prevented it. Google clearly foresaw that problem with their "circles" feature.

Google+ was started in 2010, so Google didn’t “fore”see the problem as much as “see”. I think I banged into the 1500 (1600?) FB friend cap in 2008 or 2009 from the rampant friending, and already started reducing the number and openness of my posts once older and younger relatives started joining in 2006/7ish. The timeline redesign did pour gas on the fire, but the issue of unbridled friending was noticeable far sooner to users and observers.

> it's impolite to not accept friend requests from e.g. coworkers or relatives that you know but don't really care about.

This always confuses me. I feel like it's more impolite or disrespectful to be two-faced about this.

What's wrong with telling someone, politely, that you try to curate your social media and restrict it to personal friends and family?

If they get offended, is that not their fault? Should they not respect your boundaries?

The end goal is money. To make money they sell influence. They control the narrative with these algorithms. My two cents

> I don't understand how they think an algorithm can decide better what I want to see than me myself

Presumably, they don’t think they can decide what you want better than you can. But they think they can decide what will make you engage more, and they’re probably right. The damage is not accidental.

Micro blogging was super cool.

A random feed of micro blogging posts/status that is not random but heavily leans toward resharing led to outrage porn addiction.

For skim readers having troubles parsing the comment. It not about actual porn. Just things that are grotuitously outrageous.

"You can check-out any time you like, But you can never leave!" - Eagles

;-)

Same with Twitter.

Twitter is just an hopeless platform really, the combination of commenting out of context (everything is out of context), low character count, lack of scoping & zero moderation (beside the most illegal stuff) is just a recipe for disaster, you even have external websites to enable you to read threads... Unlike Facebook, I'm not even sure Twitter is fixable.

On Twitter you can just switch off the algorithm and see all posts from the accounts you follow in chronological order.