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0 pointsasdff6y ago0 comments

It's as simple as toning down the virulance and addiction potential that has been baked into social media over the years. Revert to chronological feeds based on timestamp alone, and not sorting based on how many inflammatory comments and shares they have. Ban more pages that produce and share these misinformed posts. These are problems that these engagement algorithms themselves created, and social media companies are too timid to actually solve for fear of affecting stock price.

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3 comments · 3 top-level

koheripbal6y ago

I don't think reverting to chrono content makes sense. If popularity doesn't influence what's top-of-feed, then we'll just be flooded with un-interesting content.

Imagine if HN or Reddit didn't sort by popularity? Everyone would need to sort through /new. ...that's not scalable.

What would be better would be to reward controversial content. If lots of people downvote something, and also lots of people upvote, then maybe it needs more attention, not less?

So that rather than creating ever-more-extremist bubbles, people are more likely to see opinions that make them force them to appreciate other points of view.

3 more replies

cabalamat6y ago

> toning down the [...] addiction potential that has been baked into social media over the years

That hurts the bottom line so the social media companies won't do it unless they are forced to.

> Revert to chronological feeds based on timestamp alone

At the very least this should be an option (and not one that is automatically reset every time you view a page -- I'm looking at you facebook).

redisman6y ago

Right, the actual fix is to change their core business model which they'll never do.

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