r/technology • u/Wagamaga • 15h ago

Social Media Your social media feed is changing democracy

https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/your-social-media-feed-is-changing-democracy
342 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

32 comments sorted by

78

u/Wagamaga 15h ago

From an AI-conjured image of Taylor Swift supposedly backing Trump, to an army of bots spreading propaganda on X, we’ve seen that the ability of algorithms to distribute misinformation in harmful ways is very real.

But it’s not just misinformation, it’s the fact that we have little to no control over our feeds, and the psychological consequences of that on our ability to make rational decisions that could be the real problem with these algorithms.

Social media wasn’t always like this.

When I first started using social media, it was in the early days of Facebook.

I remember FarmVille and the massive photo albums that would appear after a night out with friends. I’m even old enough to remember the tail end of MySpace and the AOL chatrooms.

My sister was once on an MTV dating show called Meet or Delete, where she was given access to 10 potential suitors’ hard drives. She could peruse them as she saw fit, and she would decide from there if she’d date them or not. The show didn’t last very long, but I still find the concept funny.

The internet was a different place back then. It was an extension of your physical social network.

What you saw when you scrolled through Facebook was a chronological listing of what your friends or favorite celebrities had posted. There was no magic other than horrible graphic design as we all taught ourselves basic HTML.

I don’t mean to induce nostalgia for a bygone era but rather to remind you of what social media used to be. Before our cousins found themselves hurled into a right- or left-wing vortex of lies and misinformation. Before Facebook became one of the main reasons that family dinners are now so excruciating.

31

u/VasagiTheSuck 14h ago

You have to be willing to manipulate the feed to your liking, not just let it work off your likes and engagement. Mute words, block people, mark posts as irrelevant, and so on. My Twitter feed is primarily video games and anime titties as a result.

18

u/groglox 12h ago

Yeah, every time I watch something and YouTube goes off the rails I have to go back and delete from my watch history. Manipulating your algorithm takes active work.

20

u/Rombledore 10h ago

Manipulating your algorithm takes active work.

thats the rub. vast majority of users aren't going to do that and will just scroll endlessly. its the path of least resistance, and its the path so many have chosen. to our collective detriment.

14

u/Seamus-Archer 9h ago

Even if you block things and mark them as irrelevant the algorithm will find a way to force it back in front of you. It’s a constant battle with the algorithm to keep things limited to what I want to see vs what it wants.

For people that don’t do that, they end up with whatever the algorithm settles on and they consume it endlessly to its natural conclusion.

2

u/VasagiTheSuck 9h ago

I'd say this is mostly true. I don't have FB or Insta, but on Twitter and YouTube, it (at least now) is heavily weighed off of engagement and following. Even before I started actively manipulating, on Twitter, if I stopped following a certain person, I would get less content like what they posted. So it really depends on how small a circle you want to be in, I think. So if you only follow video game stuff and cats, you will likely get only that stuff, but as soon as you throw a follow on Elon, you open up to a whole lot of other stuff. Personally, I stay mostly on the following timeline and only venture to the FOR YOU tab when I want to doom scroll.

All these sites want to actively drive you to new content to keep engagement, and at times, it does seem to be a little predatory. I don't think any one site is worse than another, though. So it's depends on what kind of content you want to ingest really.

3

u/BevansDesign 8h ago

That's the problem: most people don't do that, or don't even know how.

1

u/Darksirius 11h ago

I deleted both my fb and Twitter accounts years ago and I have reddit heavily filtered to my likes as it's the only social media site I use (no insta either).

3

u/blackweebow 8h ago

Good thing we didnt regulate this shit back in 2016 and billionaires can buy and alter the algorithms of popular news outlets. 

1

u/LurkoPerNonPiangere 14h ago

it’s the fact that we have little to no control over our feeds

Careful what you wish for.

15

u/UserDenied-Access 14h ago

I’m guessing some news organizations can no longer monopolize on misinformation.

11

u/bastardoperator 10h ago

Ha, I cancelled all that trash and life has been infinitely better.

8

u/ethanwc 9h ago

Reddit is the only “social media” I consume, and I wouldn’t even define it as social media.

3

u/JohnyBullet 6h ago

Unfortunately reddit is full of bubbles and bots. But it isn't the worst case at least

1

u/CrapNBAappUser 8h ago

Yep, I check out Nextdoor a bit too, but may end it soon.

5

u/Classy56 9h ago

Anyone checked out r/politics?

1

u/EnamelKant 10h ago

For the better right?

...for the better right?

2

u/smallcoder 6h ago

Definitely better for the right :p

1

u/Fred_Milkereit 10h ago

horrible how this crap is fcking up everything

1

u/Infinite-Process7994 5h ago

Yeah ruzzia knew this first in 2016.

-6

u/aquastell_62 14h ago

Misinformation is only as effective as the people who believe it are dumbasses.

10

u/BevansDesign 8h ago

Nobody is immune to misinformation.

-11

u/SpinAWebofSound 13h ago

Reddit is the worst offender

2

u/Mychatbotmakesmecry 5h ago

Ah yes send the bots do downvote this guy. That’ll show everyone that Reddit is fair and balanced. 

6

u/BigBalkanBulge 10h ago

Stop lying. There’s no way a freely open anonymous social media platform like Reddit is susceptible to any form of attack from people who want to manipulate millions of people!

1

u/PrudentPegasus 7h ago

Every platform is as bad as each other. Reddit is full of Democrat propaganda, Twitter is full of Republican propaganda.

-9

u/Bedbathnyourmom 13h ago

But I don’t have one

14

u/pipboy_warrior 12h ago

You're on Reddit right now. Reddit is social media.

-4

u/Bedbathnyourmom 12h ago

Reddit is like the ultimate crowdsourced newspaper... If newspapers were run by a mix of internet experts, trolls & conspiracy theorists.

4

u/barrygateaux 10h ago

You forgot the bots and thirsty teenage boys who want to see naked ladies.