To be honest, I came here to get away from the toxicity of algorithm driven social media, reddit etc., but I find myself as angered here as anywhere else. While the algorithms play their role in generating anger, I'm finding more and more that people are as much of the problem as anything else.

Yes it's great that I can tailor my feed to exactly what I want, and that works fine, but it seems they are riddled with disgruntled, pissed off, angry, paranoid people that don't seem to be happy with anything before them, and seem intent on annoying everyone around them.

It was a breath of fresh air at first. Subscribe to X, Y and Z, only receive updates on X, Y and Z, but it was quickly ruined by the people, not the algorithm.

It's getting increasingly difficult to exist online now without this toxicity, and we can't keep blaming the algorithms.

Anyway, maybe I was a bit naive about what to expect, but its disappointing. We are running out if enjoyable spaces to exist in online and thats a shame.

What I do is:

• Don't click on or share fascist or demotivating content, promoting or naming them in any way.
• Whenever you see a fellow comrade using their stuff - and you know they'd reject fascism -, privately inform them to use different content.
• Share more centrist and left-wing stuff with everyone. Not just politics, also just relaxing stuff.
• With those inclined to fascism, share only non-polarising, boring content, and don't share their shit. Make them feel welcomed.
• Block fascists from reacting on you, but don't block them from seeing your content. After all, exposure is key to deradicalisation and striving for the wellbeing of all.
• Don't use Big Tech wherever possible. Use anti-authoritarian, left-wing, people-owned media. Only use big tech to get people off from there.
• Vouch for the good people to join trade unions, strike and protest, to join a left party, participate in direct and mutual aid, and those willing enough, to train to be able to defend.
• Don't share real names with each other. Use an anonymously paid VPN, cover yourself and your tracks.
• And at the end of day, be kind for yourself - have some self-care. :3

A few years ago I was friends with a cohort of soon-to-be Psychologists, and it was a well known fact that your options for easy employment* were either to get a job as a therapist for a major health corp and make little money and have to deal with the terrible admin, or make 2-3x working for a tech company but having to incur the karmic debt of trying to give Jolly West and James Mitchell a run for their money in the Lawful Evil competition.

*Private practice, teaching, and/or research have their own hurdles that are typically too high a barrier for entry for new grads

The problem here is the same but without the algorithm. The most active groups are political and news related. The posts that rise are all going to be political and pushed upward by the communities.

Those communities themselves are made up already extreme elements in one way or another that either got kicked off other algorithm managed communities or left those communities themselves.

And that says nothing of the gamifying of the whole online culture. People chase upvotes, the last comment, and just 'winning' discussion instead of teaching and talking. I'm no better. I try to be, but the impulse is pavolvian and takes constant effort to fight.

Social media has become this terrible mix of the casino, the strip club, and the opium den.

It hits all the worst parts of our brain and makes us weaker as a people.

It sucks.

There's academic research into this. Anger leads to reading things and commenting so algorithms bend towards it . It's scary

Social network algorithms doesn't care if you like or not the content itself, what matters the most to them is how long your screen stays parked on a post.

Maybe you're watching something you think it's terrible, and then you enter comments to see how people are reacting. It might be making you furious, but that makes it, mathematically, a successful post that grabbed your attention and therefore the algorithm will throw more of that shit at you, because it wants your attention.

It is evil because it ignores human nature and it doesn't measure how you feel about it. It rewards highly controversial topics because it knows these posts grab people's attention one way or another.

I realized this back during COVID. I had always known FB and their parent Meta were shit companies, but they were pushing engagement algorithms that lead to death threats because I would say innocuous things like stay safe and use a mask if you need to.

After my third interaction with someone in my past who had been radicalized by their garbage propaganda I said enough was enough and deleted my account.

My family still uses it and I still warn them not to, but I will never use their service for anything personal again.

A couple of years ago fb was bugging me with influencers. And a particular type, don’t remember what but I started blocking it, reporting, telling the algorithm in every way I didn’t want this.

They started pushing it only more and more.

Fuck em.

I think both things are true. The algorithms heavily push enraging content, b/c that is the best way to make people engage. And nothing is more enraging than extreme polarization. The is having a really bad impact on our societies. Mine is suffering really bad. Lots of others are on this path too.

This quote is from a FB data scientist and manager at FB!

Frances Haugen: When we live in an information environment that is full of angry, hateful, polarizing content it erodes our civic trust, it erodes our faith in each other, it erodes our ability to want to care for each other, the version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world. Its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarizing, it's easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions.

But also true, that it kinda happens even without algorithms. There's a number, I forgot the name of it. It's relatd to how many ppl we interact with in our lives. Before the internet, it was always like a couple hundred tops. With some exceptions, like kings, but for most ppl it was true. Social media changed this number. A person can go to FB and post enraging content that 500M people will see. That's new, overnight by evolutionary standards.

None of this is about your mental health or protecting fragile people. It's about policing the Internet. The government hates the free and open internet. They want a regulated one like Russia, China, and North Korea. That is the real reason behind this sudden shift against social media. They are scared of being exposed such as the Epstein Files. They want our Digital ID so they can police us with facial recognition software. 1984 is coming sooner then you think! And I say this as someone from the UK where it is already begun. We never had freedom of speech to start with though.