nini

Nini was here

@nini

just an otter that did rechosts

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@nini@bitbang.social
nini
@nini
nicky
@nicky
nicky
@nicky

in my honest imho, i think people should stop expecting The Algorithm to hand their entire online experience to them. because whatever The Algorithm is, it mostly delivers slop. black box recommendations and For You pages are an absolute scourge

i recommended cohost to someone and they complained a day later that there wasn't anyone to follow and there isn't an app. i told them how to turn the site into an app on their phone and pointed out ways of discovering posts & people. they were like "but why do i have to do all that work". like, idk, that's not really work? maybe you should learn how to seek out the things you care about, and create those things if you can't find them? it doesn't have to be on cohost either! curate your online experience! become immune to slop! this is my imho!

nini
@nini

Guess I must be one of those dumbasses because there is at least some benefit to the algorithm in simply being a tool to find things. Found stuff that wasn't slop, I could have put the effort in searching around but such effort is dependent on if what you want to find wants to be found or at the very least is making itself findable.

I'll look for sure but if the algo wants to go "hey, this thing seems like your thing" then I'll accept it just the same as someone rechosting a thing they liked and then go deeper to see what they're offering, there's still a curation involved and I'll still make judgement calls based on looking further. The algo is very often wrong but when it's right, it's pretty cool. Just saying that for me, the algo can be a force for good in terms of being discoverable and that even searching and curating isn't perfect if it's a black box of things you hope is tagged right or followed by someone you're following.

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in reply to @nicky's post:

eramdam
@eramdam

This and also I feel like we’re at the point where, with AI slop being cheaper and cheaper to produce you will have to curate your experience even if the website you’re on already has The Slop Page because otherwise you would just see Worse Slop.

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Bigg
@Bigg

I honestly can't think of anything more pathetic than stating outright that you don't know how to find & follow things you enjoy on the internet

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jeroknite
@jeroknite

I really wish I knew how to convince others that it's worth putting a tiny amount of effort into using the internet. I wish I knew how to convince others that stuff like adblockers were worth using. I wish it was more than just the Computer Touchers who were willing to learn

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aune
@aune

okay so i believe you on this but i do not understand how someone could exist on this modern internet and not immediately see the value in an adblocker, most pages are more ad than slop by volume

i guess this just shows that even the parts of my friend group that are outside of a bubble are kinda in one

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xexzee
@xexzee

it's been kinda surprising for me to see how quickly people have forgotten how to discover things on the internet on tbh, like you kind of just click on profiles/tags/posts you think look cool or interesting, which will bring up a whole new page of profiles/tags/posts to click on, and so on, and i feel like it really was not that long ago that everywhere on the internet was like that. even here on cohost i've seen some ppl mention how it feels harder to find anything and idk it's just like. you just click links.. if you see a post that looks even mildly interesting to you, you can check out the poster's profile, or explore the tags on the post.. you do the thing that made the internet such a powerful means of communication in the first place, yknow

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Renpona
@Renpona

people understand that much

the problem is that when you log onto cohost for the first time, you don't see any posts. there's no cool or interesting posts for you to click on. you start with a blank slate. you have to go guess at a tag and start searching for them yourself

most other social media sites will start you off with a basic feed of stuff that's popular, and you can just scroll that feed looking for stuff that you find interesting and click on that stuff and go from there

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nicky
@nicky

"you have to go guess at a tag and start searching for them yourself" exactly. that's a good thing. my whole point is that it's worth it to expend the tiny amount of effort to curate your own experience

there's no guesswork for the first-time user either, they just pick a topic they're interested in and see what stuff in those tags. if that is somehow too much effort for this kind of user, i guess TikTok is an option. from what i understand, with that app you don't need to think at all. you just Consume

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pc98jr
@pc98jr

The fundamental problem is that literacy of the Internet (computers in general, really) is in sharp decline due to modern computing methods (tablets and smartphones) because they present primarily tightly controlled and and curated experiences. People raised with this paradigm feel alienated, so they don't want to overcome the hurdle and do what we had to do before.

The issue is so much broader than this or any other site, this is more a microcosm of larger issues.

At least, that's what I believe.

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stu
@stu

it doesn't help that we've been teaching kids to read wrong for the last decade and went with "young people know about tech intrinsically" as our strategy for teaching kids about computers.

i don't think it's so much about young people's motivations - i learned how to use a computer in computer class, it didn't matter if i wanted to learn or not, it was school. i was lucky enough to have a home computer but no one expected that just passively having one was a good enough education

when computers are intimidating and longform reading is no fun, it's pretty reasonable to want to stick to the apps

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Renpona
@Renpona

the algorithm delivers slop because a large amount of people LIKE that stuff

there are lots of problems with algorithmic stuff, but you can't really take them on without acknowledging the elephant in the room: pretty much every algorithmic recommendation algorithm just shows you stuff a lot of other people like

a lot of people aren't signing up to social media to find things they care about. they're signing up for social media to fill their free time and stave off boredom by scrolling an endless supply of mildly interesting posts/videos/whatever. they're not on these sites to find things that are Important To Them, they're on these sites to kill some time. waste fifteen minutes during their break at work. occupy themselves while their food is cooking. whatever. shit like that

they are not going to put effort into it, because it is not important enough to them for them to put effort into. they're looking for quick entertainment, not a new chore

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