It seems like the expectation is that they are the same, but that does not appear to be the case. It could be just the differences between the accounts generating the posts that I'm commenting on, but it feels like in general, comments (even well-written, lengthy responses with #hashtags) disappear into the wind, while any basic post, directly submitted to the stream gets #engagement.
Does someone have a "who sees your post" flowchart for Masto that includes #comments?
If I understand correctly, there is no residual #information on user and/or post #Quality being used in the algorithm?
This also has relevance for discussions about intra-network content #curation, #factcheck, #reputation, and other #SocialMedia#community functions that could be getting shortchanged by the current protocols & other norms.
Fmr #Trump treas sec #Mnuchin is telling investors he has a plan to buy #TikTok
Mnuchin told potential backers he aims to maneuver around its price of >$100B & #China’s ban of the export of recommendation #algorithms.
He indicated he could overcome those hurdles by offering to buy the #app w/o the export-blocked #code, essentially forcing his consortium to remake a service built on billions of lines of code.
"When a subscription-based nudism video provider shows content containing white supremacy hand gestures"
I don't recommend watching this if you're a cis white male who is going to get offended that I talked about the resistance "many" (don't # notAllBullshit at me) cis white males display when racist/transphobic/etc dog whistles are pointed out to them, just because in their #privilege they've never noticed such things before.
I'm actually pretty nervous about posting this video to any mainstream platform, given how easily the #censorship#algorithms can be weaponized to get content that haters don't like #banned . But I felt like it was important enough to try to speak out anyway. Beyond that, even though I censored out the nudist video sharing website's name in the video, they have deep pockets and I'm nervous they'll somehow decide to sue me for defamation or something, even though the freeze frame is taken DIRECTLY FROM their video...
We're still in a place where when computers try to be "helpful" (using #AI, predictive #algorithms, recommendation algorithms etc.) are too close to #Clippy territory instead of being genuinely helpful.
So I'd rather have them not try to do that. I know what I'm doing and would prefer to not having to constantly undo the "help".
I like my #aurora photos, but feel a bit of a fraud posting them. I saw only faint grey wisps of mist; it was my #PhoneCamera's #algorithms that imbued that mist with colour and shape.
Is it deceptive to distort reality with these photos?
Or (at least on occasion) are phone cameras marvelous tools, like telescopes, macro lenses, or infrared filters, which can actually show us new ways of seeing?
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty..."
People yearn for acceptance, to be acknowledged for who they are. No one enjoys being ostracized, sidelined, or ignored.
Algorithms on certain social platforms can sometimes foster these feelings, leading to sadness or, worse, anger.
Let's strive for inclusivity in our online spaces.
TITLE: YouTube Pseudo-Psychology, Algorithm Traps, and How I Got Set-Up
to Look Like I Cheat
My wife and I share a YouTube Premium subscription. A few weeks ago I
was scrolling through YouTube recommendations when I came across a video
on different male personality types.
"Sure", I thought, "I'm a therapist -- why not check it out". So I
watched the video as it invited me to try and decide which type of male
I was as they described them. I noticed they made the "Sigma Male"
sound the most attractive -- which was a bit odd -- but I thought little
more about it.
A few weeks later (tonight), up popped a video on 10 characteristics of
a "Sigma Male". I was curious, so I watched it. They spent the whole
video making "Sigma Males" seem like super heroes. Suspicious now, I
went to the channel these videos were coming from to look around.
I was displeased to see that 10% of the videos were on male personality
characteristics, and 90% of the videos were dedicated to how Sigma
Males Get Women. Video after video of how to bag yourself a blonde or
brunette. Yuck.
You can guess where this is going -- now our shared YouTube
recommendations list is full of how-to videos on attracting hot women.
The uncool thing is I have never watched any such video to deserve
this. The really uncool thing is my wife will be spotting this
tomorrow. Happily -- she is very understanding and not the jealous type.
Besides -- she can always look at my view history. I'll also be sending
her this message. :)
Is there actually a valid psychological theory outside pop psychology
including "Sigma Males"? When I Google it, I get lots of pop psychology
websites, including something called the "Incel Wiki".
Now I do feel slightly ill.
-- Michael
APPENDED NOTE:
I sent the original note above out a few days ago on a national psych
listserv and it engendered some relevant psychological discussion on how
AI and algorithms effect the mental health of our clients.
Happily my wife thought the note and situation above hilarious (I
thought she might).
Part of what was so troubling to me here was the clear funneling process
being executed on vulnerable young men on YouTube:
STEP 1: Grab guys just interested in learning about themselves. (Or
psychotherapists interested in personality systems.)
STEP 2: Make "Sigma Males" sound like the most attractive type so they
are identified with. (Lonely geeks are recast as desirable lone wolf
types with all the skills of alpha males.)
STEP 3: Game the YouTube algorithm so the next recommendations are how
"Sigma Males" get women. (I decided to bail at this point so I am not
going to view what is being recommended. Judging by the fact that "Sigma
Male" connects in Google searches to Incel websites, I shutter to think...)
[It's possible that "Sigma Male" is a term from a legitimate personality
system, but if so, its been at least partially co-opted by pop psychology.]
A discussion commenter stated: /"The mental health challenge is to help
people become aware of how AI is taking over their lives so that they
can manage the AI rather than have the AI manage them."/
My new resolve to periodically create new YouTube profiles to get out of
old tracking algorithms is one example of an adaptation.
*People need other ways to escape tracking to get out of boxes* -- like
the old BBS (bulletin board systems) that let you read (or not read)
every community comment from every poster without algorithms tailoring
your newsfeed.
*People need tools to recognize when they are being herded into specific
ways of thinking.* Like many of our political silos. Like my original
example above of an interest in male psychology potentially leading to
Incel-like "education" on how to be a "Sigma Male" who gets all the women.
*Businesses need some government regulation in what tracking they can do
-- in all environments, but especially the free ones.* People may need
to return to PAYING for their information sources so they themselves are
not the product.
Ironically, it was GOOGLE, whose "I'm feeling lucky" button below the
search engine field used to take users to a random website somewhere on
the Internet.
*We are now in need of actively maintaining personal ways to randomly
escape our information bubbles so as to better recognize them.**
***
-- Michael
*Michael Reeder, LCPC
*
*Hygeia Counseling Services : Baltimore / Mt. Washington Village location*
*410-871-TALK / michael(at)hygeiacounseling.com*
#psychology #socialwork #psychotherapy #research #incel #AI
#artificialintelligence #youtube #mentalhealth @psychology@a.gup.pe
@socialwork@a.gup.pe @psychotherapists@a.gup.pe @psychiatry@a.gup.pe
#Algorithms #personalitytests @silos
As if Instagram wasn't bad enough already, I just realised they've removed the "recent posts" option for hashtags. So there's almost no way for someone without billions of followers to be discovered that way.
Christ I hate Meta's manipulative, algorithm-heavy approach. Let's never have algorithms here, they're so isolating. You can end up feeling entirely ignored if you're not serving up what the algorithm likes.
"The goal of the project is to develop an efficient #algorithm for compressing voxel models. As an input format, an unsorted list of 3D integer coordinates and attribute data is used. Multiple methods for encoding geometry data including Cuboid Extraction (CE), Sparse #Voxel#Octrees (SVOs) with Space-Filling Curves, and Run-Length Encoding (RLE) are explained and then compared in terms of complexity, #compression ratio, and real life performance."
“Algorithms have been around since antiquity; the digital computer merely automates the execution of algorithms using increasingly large sets of inputs and variables. But digital algorithms represents a crystallization of social relations. In effect, implicit rules, protocols, and norms embedded in our social structure find their way into digital algorithms, often without being noticed or considered.”
Some people complain about the lack of an algorithm to surface posts on #Mastodon, because when they open up in the morning, they have to scroll back to see everything that was posted during their night.
I understand the temptation to do that, but I'd say, don't. One of the very best things about pre-algorithm Twitter was the immediacy. The "you snooze, you lose", "if you miss it, it's gone" philosophy. Losing that urgent, immediate nature of Twitter was one of the biggest reasons I raged so hard against the introduction of said algorithm, and one of the things I still miss the most -- and consequently, one of the biggest draws to Mastodon, and why I so wish I'd discovered it years ago already.
So when I sit down at my desk in the morning, I fire up @sengi_app (my Mastodon client of choice), and I start there. With what I can see in my timeline without scrolling. That's it. What happened before that is gone forever (unless someone I follow boosts it).
Similarly, I might quickly glance at Mastodon during the day, and I might interact with the posts I see there, but I won't scroll back. If I missed it, it's gone.
To me, that's one of the biggest joys of the network.
(Obviously, this excludes notifications. I will scroll through my notifications and respond to those that need response or some sort of actioning) :-)
Once again on the commercial socia media platforms I’m seeing opinions stating that with the algorithmic social medias like Threads we can’t follow the news ans events of the world properly and any ”old Twitter-like” social channel no longer exist. While I agree with the first, I completely disagree with the latter. The social web movement in the Fediverse is just that. And this is just a beginning.
#linux#foss#os#ai#algorithms#cybersecurity#webdev konuları başta olmak üzere teknolojiyi içinde barındıran neredeyse her konu ile ilgileniyorum. #sci-fi okumayı da izlemeyi de severim. Farklı hobiler de edinmeye çalışıyorum, org çalmak, bisiklete binmek gibi.
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Talk me out of this: virtual green screen. When you start Zoom, Teams, or Webex, you stand outside the camera's visual field. The app records the scene and then replaces it with your virtual background. It only actually shows anything that is in front of the background (you, your chair, objects you pick up). Obviously you'd build in a bit of motion-compensation, maybe using an algorithm stolen from digital cameras. #meetings#algorithms
New study, impressive result: "Here we show how #AI can go beyond the current state of the art in [#sorting efficiency] by discovering hitherto unknown routines…We formulated the task of finding a better sorting routine as a single-player game. We then trained a new deep reinforcement learning agent, AlphaDev, to play this game. AlphaDev discovered small sorting algorithms from scratch that outperformed previously known human benchmarks." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06004-9
As Mastodon has no algorithm, there is no machine pushing posts into your feed. You only see posts from accounts you don’t follow if they are “boosted” (reposted) by those you do follow. This setup is great for users – you see all your chosen peeps in a chronological timeline – but it’s obviously limiting for creators who want to spread their stuff far and wide. So, despite my pref for Mast over all networks, I assumed there is almost no potential to “go viral” here. … #Algorithms#SocialMedia