Kill your Feeds - Stop letting algorithms dictate how you think
I somehow have an experience that I don’t know if it supports the thesis or not. But since maybe the pandemic and me becoming very aggressive about ad blocking and tweaking my online presence, most algorithmic feeds don’t work for me. Or maybe they work, but not in a way that keeps me engaged. YouTube will not serve me anything except what I already liked (which is music, as I use liked videos as a lazy way to add to my music list), and Facebook in particular will not keep me engaged, showing me the same 10 posts from 2 people that I will not be able to refresh. There is no difference between “Most Recent” or any other list. Searching for posts will not respect whatever I enter and will show unrelated stuff—very few results anyway. Twitter was somehow like that, but at least search worked, though I left it.
I block ads on all these websites, and I’m not a content creator. I don’t comment or post anything except on very rare occasions. I even, for a short period, made an account on Bluesky and tried to engage, but my habits kicked in, and the following list was the only list with any content to read. Sure, this has the side effect of reducing my social media time to the bare minimum. It seems to me that my behavior is usually considered unworthy by common behavioral algorithms (just a feeling, not even an argument).
As for media-focused social media like Instagram and TikTok, I don’t think I ever had a chance because I don’t like photography, I like reading, and I’m not even a visual learner, so text is what I prefer. But I don’t think I would have a different experience with algorithmic content there, and I don’t plan on trying anyway.
From my personal experience, algorithms don’t dictate what I think because probably it deem me unworthy for financial gains.