this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2024
776 points (97.9% liked)

Comic Strips

12557 readers
4519 users here now

Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.

The rules are simple:

Web of links

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Problem is that none of the algorithms actually care about showing you things you like.

Ads try to sell you on things that you wouldn't otherwise buy. Occasionally, they may just inform you about a good product that you simply didn't know about, but there's more money behind manipulating you into buying bad products, because it's got a brand symbol.

And content recommendation algorithms don't care about you either. They care about keeping you on the platform for longer, to look at more ads.
To some degree, that may mean showing you things you like. But it also means showing you things that aggravate you, that shock you. And the latter is considered more effective at keeping users engaged.