I would like to go a level deeper into the author's experience: why did that change occur? Why did media become so interested in sanitized, toned down opinions and heavy editing?
The post was bought by Bezos, so changes are more explainable. What about the times?
My pet theory is that these things happened once the feedback loop for what got clicks kicked in (early 2000s perhaps).
a) The clicks were fake but treated as real to prop up the advertising market, and then fed into the editorial decisions.
b) The clicks were real but we discovered, as others did, that more people click on literal 'clickbait' then on harder to consume, but more authentic content. Short attention spans might also factor in here.
I jump to the oft-repeated story about Google A/B testing a shade of blue (IDK if it's true), versus someone just making a goddamn decision and owning it. We should optimise on our best behaviours, not our average ones.
Perhaps said more succintly, we replaced leadership with local-maxima.
I think TikTok was the cleanest of it, in that the social aspect was non existent (other than sharing links to friends as modern equivalent of small talk).
The most toxic combo is having fomo as a Hook (social for fb/Instagram, laboral for LinkedIn, etc) pushing you to check frequently and then being hit with the unending feed once inside.
At the very least I think we should separate the scroll apps and the social networks by law.
Vine was the cleanest and the fact that anyone is using BlueSky or any Dorsey-endorsed product after he killed Vine is the strongest possible evidence of the Gell-Mann effect.
The fact Twitter bought Vine and just shut it down still blows my mind. Sometimes I wonder what things would look like if they kept it alive. At the very least, I don't think Elon could have bought Twitter.
Yea. I'm not even arguing for any policies right now, just wishfully thinking it could all disappear. Policies are complex. Headcanon where short form content never existed is easy :)
The obvious question to me is why pornography? There is _a lot_ of content on the internet potentially harmful for kids, from political radicalisation through drug apologies to brutal violence. Is viewing pornography worse than seeing the aftermath of a shooting?
It seems very clear that if one really wants to protect children, enforcement of protection should go somewhere else - banning kids access to unlimited devices for example. But this is not the intention of course. No one is blamed for handing a toddler a phone with TikTok on.
Because there is some kink in the Anglo Saxon psyche that means it's appealing to voters? I don't know, but I can't think of another explanation. The European countries focus their ire on violence and anti social behaviour, which makes far more sense to me.
It pretty clearly isn't because porn is particular harmful. If it was the explosion of porn the internet has made available would have some obvious effects. Yet all we get is the occasional report of some porn addicted individual. Not good, but it's more than offset by the reduction in sex crimes in the same period. And as addictions go porn addiction does seem that bad. Wasting time on porn is still wasted time I guess, but isn't actively harmful like, sugar addiction, nicotine addiction, alcohol addiction or gambling addiction - all of which are tolerated.
This feels like a perfectionist fallacy. One has to start somewhere, pornography is something we can pretty much all agree children shouldn’t be watching. It’s theoretically a mostly-achievable goal.
Solving one problem doesn’t mean we can’t also work on solving the others.
My point is not "if we don't solve everything it's not good". My point is "if you focus on this very specific part of the supposed problem while never mentioning the rest, I very much doubt the sincerity of your goal" (you being the government in this case). This is just "think of the children".
The thing is that it's already illegal for minors to see pornography.
It's not illegal for minors to access their technology devices or watch disturbing news footage.
This is merely an enforcement vehicle for rules that already exist. It is an acknowledgment that the law that has been in place for years doesn't work anymore.
Back in the pre-Internet days the adult video store or cinema would make sure you were of proper age to patronize those businesses. Sure, you could sift through your Dad's Playboys but essentially, an adult could reasonably be able to figure out how to limit exposure of content to their children.
In the current environment it's basically impossible.
An analogy to the status quo would be if drinking for under 21/18 was illegal but no bars or stores were required to check ID. That makes it effectively legal.
Now, as to your point on whether these rules make sense in the first place? I think we can reasonably assume that most of the voting public isn't in favor of legalizing pornography for minors. It doesn't really have to make sense when compared to other things we allow exposure to.
In other words, the existing laws already roughly reflect our cultural values. Most people in the Western world are literally more okay with showing their child something violent versus something pornographic.
If we all collectively as a culture decide to change that in the future, great, but I doubt a referendum to that effect would have majority agreement.
Essentially, the only concern with this law should be the anonymity of the age verification. All other concerns are addressed by the fact that a minor viewing pornography is already breaking the law.
> It is illegal for an individual to knowingly use interactive computer services to display obscenity in a manner that makes it available to a minor less than 18 years of age (See 47 U.S.C. § 223(d) –Communications Decency Act of 1996, as amended by the PROTECT Act of 2003). It is also illegal to knowingly make a commercial communication via the Internet that includes obscenity and is available to any minor less than 17 years of age (See 47 U.S.C. § 231 –Child Online Protection Act of 1998).
> The standard of what is harmful to minors may differ from the standard applied to adults. Harmful materials for minors include any communication consisting of nudity, sex or excretion that (i) appeals to the prurient interest of minors, (ii) is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable material for minors, (iii) and lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.
The most important part of this quote is that the standard for minors is different than that of adults. Material that is not considered obscenity for adults (e.g., legal pornography) can be and is considered obscenity for minors.
Tiktoks algorithm takes a while to get used to but it is pretty tameable. Quick way that works for me:
- avoid attempts based on "unliking" things, I'm pretty sure it treats it as engagement. Instead swipe bad content away.
- avoid "accidentally engaging", like replying to a comment you feel is wrong or watching something you don't like because you were trying to see where the speech was going. Disengage ASAP with unwanted.
- positive feedback for whatever video starts getting close to what you want.
- positive implies staying the whole clip, liking, viewing comments, commenting, liking comments and the strongest of all, sharing the video (you can send it to a telegram conversation with yourself or whatever, not sure if the link you shared ever being opened is accounted for but I think nope). Do this on purpose, like if a video is cool just open the comment section and like all comments without looking.
-try to "navigate". If you want to see tech and it's currently showing you music, maybe engage with music production or Spotify tricks when they appear. It might not be the tech you're looking for, but it's closer to tech than a teenage girl dancing. You'll eventually be shown things more relevant to you, at which point you grab that current.
Also do not try to rush the process. I think updating your interests is not instant, and session time might be a metric as well.
This is fascinating, I'm curious -- do you find yourself generally thinking in this way when using TikTok? Do you find that your peers that use TikTok do something similar?
This is just completely foreign to how I consume media. The idea that I need to try and "trick" an algorithm into showing me what I want is just completely unappealing. I'd much rather go somewhere else and actively seek out the content that I want, rather than trying to fight a system that seems like it would prefer me to be a passive consumer.
"Passive" not in the sense that I shouldn't be engaged, clearly, as the algorithm rewards engagement. But passive in the sense that I should not be seeking out what I want to see, I should just be reactive based on what I am shown, and then the platform will decide from that what I really want.
Like, no, this just makes me recoil completely. Why would I want to bother with that?
>do you find yourself generally thinking in this way when using TikTok? Do you find that your peers that use TikTok do something similar?
Yup. It was new to me, as I learned from younger friends. To them it's obvious it's ride or be taken for a ride - not doing this active navigation, they'd compare it with surfing reddit using just the default frontpage unlogged.
In fact people even troll each other, for example by sending someone a mormon speech or an untranslated meme from India to screw with their feeds.
I have to say that in a way it's way better than YouTube or Instagram, where you can't really tame the thing and it will suddenly decide for a month that you like Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro because you watched a video about bodybuilding.
>Like, no, this just makes me recoil completely. Why would I want to bother with that?
Because a huge amount of interesting content is there. I also prefer the old style, but I'd rather begrudgingly adapt than be left behind in progressively decaying platforms - it is what it is.
You don't have to do any of this. He's just explaining more about how the algorithm works.
To a first approximation, TikTok simply shows you more of what you watch. If you swipe away a lot of stuff in the first second or two, it stops showing you that kind of stuff. If you watch complete videos, it shows you more like that.
I'm aware that this is how the algorithm works, but the parent comment is not just explaining how it works, they gave suggestions based on things that "work for me".
So I am specifically trying to sus out how common it is among tiktok users to have this sort of strategic thinking around the algorithm, since it's not something I've heard much of before.
This is very common and I would even say a necessary part of using algorithmic social media now, basically awareness of the algorithm and interacting with content in a way that keeps your algorithm tuned to what you want. For example I avoid clicking anything political on YouTube because as soon as I do, my suggestions become full of political ragebait.
My cynical take is that a lot of the people for whom the tiktok algorithm "didn't work" simply weren't pleased by what the algorithm (correctly) thought of them. It's like the 40 year old truck driver that complains it's just hot girls dancing. No, my dude, you just ALWAYS stay to watch the girls dance, you just don't want to admit it.
In general, it "just works" after a short period of maybe searching for specific terms just to "seed" the algorithm.
Or maybe it's precisely because one will just watch hot girls dance if given the opportunity, that one would not want a social media feed that caters to your most base desires.
Totally anecdotal, but I live in the largest city in Spain, and even in my residential area (as opposed to the touristy spots) every week I can see ads for "we buy your house, paid upfront over market value, Chinese investors".
Posters in walls, flyers in windshields and so on.
Yes, it literally says Chinese investor.I guess it's to make the idea of buying immediately a flat with cash sound less shady.
I have no idea of the reasoning why specifically Chinese people invest in Spanish real state paying with cash, it's just what I see.
>Are you sure this isn't a political stunt?
It's our president's whole thing to take measures that sorta move the needle in a good direction but are focused on being good moves politically. My guess is he needs to act against rent prices, he can't go after the big guys (blackrock, etc) for fear of retribution and he can't go after the regular joe that buys a second house as investment. Foreign investors don't vote, so they're the next best option.
The UK first needs the will to do something. The UK is renowned for shell company purchases and laundering. What is wanted by the little home buyers is very different from what is wanted at the top of the pyramid. As the current uproar about the decades long grooming atrocity has shown the rot runs deep.
Do you think it is bad when foreign investment corporations buy commercial property? This is very common in London. Or only residential property? And, were you upset when foreign capital (Malaysian, mostly) helped to redevelop Battersea Power Station?
I think the ship has sailed, but regardless isn't it all meaningless? Surely they can setup a company to get around it, or will be ban all foreign ownership of shares too?
Land is a public good, insofar as "buying" the land still comes with obligations to the state (paying taxes, conforming to building codes and zoning regulation, etc). Just because you "own" it doesn't actually mean you can do as you please.
Given all of that, it is not unreasonable to limit or outright prohibit foreign ownership of land, or ownership of land by companies which are not majority-locally controlled.
On the topic of notes: are there any standard formats you prefer: I've been guilty in the past of ending up with a chaotic endless MD and I'd like a bit more process
Not the OP, but I've ended up on a good note taking pattern that works for me. I create a new folder each week with the week number of my time of employment as the name. Then, all notes for that week get put in that folder. I don't know why, but this works for me. I think knowing there's a place for them that I know I can find them later lowers the activation energy I need to take notes. Also, I put the top-level folder in my `CDPATH`.
It's not a process, but I found this gives some structure to the chaos.
I recommend Logseq if you're taking notes on a computer. Takes a moment to wrap your head around an outliner if you haven't used one, but after a short while notes will fly from your fingertips.
Being able to quickly jot things down and later revisit and expand them is crucial. Logseq also gives you a fresh journal for each day, and you can make and reference your own topic-specific pages as well.
The post was bought by Bezos, so changes are more explainable. What about the times?