I keep hearing people talk about it but have never seen the appeal -- it seems like a lot of dopamine-inducing content with little substance. I'll take a longer educational video on YouTube any day.

With these types of algorithms, massive amount of data usually perform better than any underlying model you could have.

This is what actually drives the "We talked about X and then I got an ad for it" effect. You talked about X because something you were presented with prompted your brain to think about it, and the platform knows that people in your cohort who were presented with that thing often navigated to X later, so it should show it to you to claim an impression for it. It doesn't actually have to figure out any connection of the prompting source to X.

But some people are somewhat immune to this populism. I find short form content like TikTok and Twitter/Bluesky to be actively anti-engaging. The format and medium and "Virality" mechanic drive constraints on content that are actively signal negative. Somehow my brain rejects it, even though I'm ADHD and have addictive tendencies for things like Youtube in general, novelty, and used to get extremely addicted to Reddit. I'm pretty snobby about media, so maybe whatever drives me to have that preference makes me likely to bounce off that kind of populism system. Maybe there's a biological component to Hipsterism, like a certain kind of anti-authority issue.

I strongly believe that making a product, media, or content more palatable to "General audiences" or similar large cohorts forces you to sand off all the edges, cut out any opinions or takes, and become far less palatable to a different cohort, possibly one that describes itself as having "Taste".

So in some sense, the platforms self select for people who are vulnerable to them, which simplifies classification somewhat as well, even though that is the vast majority of people. But TikTok would never find what I like because what I like cannot be found on TikTok. Notably, this includes creators who I follow like a lost puppy on youtube, because the ways you have to change and modify your output to "work" on TikTok make it worse in many ways.

Given the concept of short-form videos, some of them will be viewed and shared more than others. Just promote those to everyone. People are not that different in what they find engaging. Maybe use a few broad demographic groupings to fine-tune things a bit.

It just seems like a psychological war ground designed to entrap and monetize the user's attention, at all costs.

> Instead, the court ordered Meta to continue to improve its age-assurance tools in New Mexico, which include using artificial intelligence to determine people’s age based on signals such as who their friends are and what types of content they post and consume. Meta must also attempt to develop a dedicated “under-13-years-of-age prediction model” in the next two years.

I’m sure the results of this will be stellar, being ordered to attempt to develop an AI prediction model… if they try and it doesn’t work they still complied with the order.

Probably, but they would be still liable for the additional compensatory and punitive damages of the issues they have set precendent for being liable to.

Are we gonna make laws that say "if you're running a video platform you have to figure out what people DON'T want to watch and regularly shove it in their face so the feed is bad"? That still requires building a deep understanding of every user.

Do feeds need to all be Certified Completely Random™ content?

> In an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” a tech expert stated that the U.S. version of TikTok — a Chinese-owned social media platform — is different than the Chinese version of the app, comparing the two experiences to opium and spinach.

https://www.deseret.com/2022/11/24/23467181/difference-betwe...

This sounds a bit more advanced than

> They just figured out what you like to watch and showed you more similar stuff.

> you have to figure out what people DON'T want to watch and regularly shove it in their face so the feed is bad

They did both, and figured out the perfect delivery mechanism to keep you watching; just the right amount of everything, with an interaction pattern not dissimilar to a casino.

YouTube and Instagram are dramatically less addictive if you just download discrete videos.

I'm a huge proponent of deleting all of these apps, but if you think you organically really like certain content, download it on the fly from a list of select channels.

The solution for an individual is not to consume short-form video content.