I'd rather they acknowledge Alec as the inspiration/source for this post at the beginning and explicitly, rather than just mentioning the video in passing midway through, but at least they do link to it!
I'd hoped it would be a way to share my own opinions on it, summarise my own personal concerns, as well as adding my own recommendations - but totally appreciate if you feel it is derivative, and I appreciate the call out. As a big Technology Connections fan I certainly don't intend to steal his work.
It's also intended as something you can link to your friends and family that might be a little more digestible than a 30 minute video.
I get what your advice is about but to add some nuance which didn't cover... you should consider that I learned of Alec's Technology Connections channel 9 years ago because the Youtube algorithm suggested it to me.
Why did Youtube do that? It was because I had watched Ben's Applied Science excellent video showing vinyl grooves under an electron microscope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuCdsyCWmt8
So the first Alec video I got exposed to was his related topic on vinyl records (click "Oldest" to see them) : https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections/videos
I'd argue that the Youtube algorithm is very good at finding adjacent videos of interest especially in educational topics and DIY repair tutorials.
You're suggesting people go to Youtube subscriptions feeds but people have a list of favorites in their subscriptions often because of the algorithm. There's a bit of chicken-vs-egg situation going on there.
What a good algorithm does is help users with the Explore-vs-Exploit tradeoff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration%E2%80%93exploitati...
- Explore --> Youtube algorithm sidebar recommendations of related videos.
- Exploit --> add a worthy creator to subscription feed and get alerted to new releases from that person
The "explore" part is helped by algorithms because they can suggest videos you would have never thought of because you don't know the keywords or jargon to type into a Youtube search box to get to it directly. "You don't know what you don't know."
But don't use the algorithm for politics or click on anything that has a thumbnail with the shocked Pikachu face. That just starts a feedback loop of crap.
Arguably, the algorithms could put one into a non-productive engagement loop never to escape. Personally, I don't think it's a big risk for educational/DIY topics because your brain gets saturated with "too much information" and hits a stopping point where you don't want to learn any more.
So... Algorithms can be bad ... but you can also make them work for you.
It focuses on the harmful nature of infinitely scrolling content. Cutting out all infinite scrolling apps has had a hugely positive effect on my productivity and mental health.
Do you use the noprocrast settings? Does HN just fit differently into your brain? Something else?
The worst part is, it feels like he's making the same mistakes he's warning others about yet doesn't even realize it. He claims the bad BlueSky users are the result of algorithms, but doesn't (from what I can tell) see that his problem is that he's paying attention to a feed that brings those people to him. He complains about social media turning everything into a monolithic good vs. evil outrage generator, but then he does the exact same thing when talking about the New York Time's Canada editorial. You can say he's justified in that, but isn't everyone going to believe that they're the exception and that their outrage is justified?
I've seen this kind of criticism before, where it feels like someone is captured by something, can't escape it, gets annoyed by certain elements of it, and then creates a criticism of it that's more about venting their personal frustrations than actually escaping it (since they can't see how trapped they themselves are).
I find this claim unlikely, since there have always been crazies on the internet, and main issue is that a single crazy person can be online 24/7 with an output that dwarfs a dozen normal people.
These are my fellow people that will happily watch a 20 or 40 min video about how dishwashers work, or his more recent video about replicating old style Christmas lights.
Algorhitms, "changing how one thinks" is real, and ultimately good. The social changes, when they start expecting you to Anki your work contract (which would, if the Anki was monitored, be highly legally effective against you); or requiring you know Kellyed Bayesian decision theory because that's a prequsite for getting reasonably priced insurance, or simply, surviving, that is unknown. I give 37.7% confidence Elon Musk was gaming in 2025 U.S. politics using construct akin to a Bayesian decision tree.
It would be great if one didn't have to change how one thinks, whether they delve into CLRS or TikTok.
With all the new stuff coming out in the LLM field, I've taken a cynically mechanistic view to this:
We're basically being conditioned by (the currently popular crop of) social media to work in very short context windows, which aren't sufficient for advanced reasoning.
So yes, totally. Turn it off and go read a book.
For what its worth, 500 years ago people were just as worried about books as we are today about newsfeeds. But it took a long time for books to ultimately decentralize enough to become a more egalitarian, community knowledge. But even that's not entirely the case now. Books can be propaganda just like everything else.
Without long text, to a good approximation, you just can't convey long, multi-step reasoning chains at the limit of human intellectual capacity.
Personally I've started reading again much more recently, and it's done wonders for what's going on inside my head. I was feeling so dull! I can only recommend it.
The scale and pace of modern changes have absolutely nothing to do with what we witnessed thousands or even hundreds years ago. Word of mouth in 1700 can also propagate propaganda but no one is going to argue 1700s word of mouth propaganda is "the same" as foreign propaganda being served straight to your citizen through third party services 24/7
All propaganda isn't created equal either. If 99% of the news you get comes from the state owned journal and the state owned radio you're drinking your own Kool aid, if the propaganda comes from a foreign source straight to your population through third party services you have a whole bunch of different problems
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_1...
Where McLuhan argues technologies shape worldviews, Mumford argues worldviews also shape technologies.
And then perhaps into the world of science and technology studies (STS), where these questions are explored more deeply, and specific cases are examined.
The feed's >contents< are the message. And >the feed< is easily abused by content providers who have a PROFIT (Ferengi!) motive.
BUT I agree that The Feed is tightly intertwined with The Message. It is the enabler for HUGE audience capture. Versus the much smaller old-school audience capture of cult-psychology tactics.
However, as you say, writing something good enough and with a big enough audience is very hard.
It’s like keeping a blog on the internet no one reads. Liberating.
Your social media tools allow you to block content. I use this feature on youtube all the time. If I see a channel that's posting garbage or propaganda or flat out lies I just click the three dots and say 'Don't Recommend Channel.'
My youtube feed is a pleasant experience every day. There's no CNN or Fox news, no yelling talking heads trying to convince each other in existential terms, no jingoistic propaganda trying to influence me.
It's like what it was meant to be 20 years ago. Why do people not do this?
What we really need is "responsible" recommendation systems (that allow the joy of discovery while aggressively damping rage bait and extreme view points). They'd need to be trained with some kind of socially beneficial reward function rather than pure engagement or advertiser dollars.
Could such a recommendation systems operate on top of existing social graphs?
Not very healthy - it's like a never ending feed of "someone is wrong on the Internet".
For the record: "right" here is roughly equivalent with the political position of the US Democratic party.
Unfortunately these subreddits are not very balanced, so when I do take a break, I see that the other side "wins" to a noticeably larger degree. Again, small country.
Instead, argue as if you're trying to convince the bored reader who has climbed down through the comments (for some reason), who has found value in this discourse and is trying to get more or better perspectives. That is someone you can convince of your position.
It's been a lot easier to engage in text discourse ever since I had that epiphany, because instead of taking every bait and trying to correct every wrong, I'm only engaging with folks arguing with data, with perspective, with good faith more often than not. That leads to better outcomes, I believe, instead of just contributing to so much noise.
1. Most arguments come down to defining words, even if you may not realise it.
2. Don't follow rabbitholes. Don't deviate from arguing your core premise.
3. You're not trying to prove the other person wrong, you're trying to find the truth.
On #1 for example; I watched a video of a conservative arguing liberals (or something) about a few premises, including "gay marriage does not exist". It was immediately clear to me, but apparently not to the people in the video, that this guy has a different definition of "marriage" to me. That's the breadth of the disagreement. That's all people should've argued with him about. But not one person did. Even when he described his definition of marriage, and how his premise comes about from that definition, everybody immediately became sidetracked. There's just no chance of finding common ground behaving like that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosurf/comments/1693ky4/you_should_...
I think it's part of being human.
I invite a brain specialist to step in here and comment which regions of the brain compelled us to agree with those whom we also feel we "need".
EDIT: .. cut to ncr100 proceeding to open youtube.com ...
A lot of the sites there are pre-2020 era but some weird and wonderful stuff!
That moment made me realize something deeper: it wasn’t just the endless feed algorithms shaping my behavior, but also the platform "guidelines" themselves—subtly reinforcing a habit designed to keep me engaged for advertisers.
So I quit. Completely. What Worked for Me-
WHAT I STOPPED:
1. Deactivated my Facebook and Instagram accounts. Deleted my Twitter account.
2. Removed all social media apps (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube) from my phone.
3. Deleted Chrome from my phone and switched to my OS’s default browser (Safari) in signed-out mode.
4. Kept only one messaging app—Telegram.
WHAT I STARTED
1. Installed News Feed Eradicator on my computer (Chrome). I can still check messages and notifications (e.g., LinkedIn), but I don’t let the feed hijack my focus.
2. Went outside more—leaving my phone behind.
RESULTs:
1. Surprisingly, I think about sex less often throughout the day.
2. My close relationships have improved—I now have more meaningful time for a few important people instead of spreading myself thin over thousands.
3. I worry less—both in frequency and intensity.
4. I’ve regained my ability to read novels for hours—which, for me, requires the longest chain of attention.
5. My perspective is changing. The way I see the world feels different. I’ll need more time to articulate this fully, but I can sense the shift happening.
I feel so much freer!
This is not Crack fortunately.
Physical dependence -> dopamine -> euphoria, escape, coping with stress + anxiety -> cannot feel pleasure without the drug -> craving for the drug / dependence. Recovery includes confronting the physical feeling that the drug is essential for perceived well-being.
Psychological dependence (TikTok / Insta Feed) -> sense of belonging, validation, purpose -> sense of identity via subculture, especially for "marginalized" or "insecure" individuals -> (side-note, some TikTok / Insta / MAGA+Dem / feeds CREATE+encourage the sense of marginalization / insecurity) -> us versus them -> isolation, only valuing subculture views, promoted distorted beliefs, detachment -> dependence (again). Recovery includes depression, anxiety, and feelings of loss.
WEANING
- Drug: medical intervention, therapy, support, relapse prevention
- Social: therapy, reconnection, critical thinking development, finding alt purpose, gradual separation
Learning how to think critically, I think that's the intersection of this cartoon and this blog post.
The more people that do this the more we can start rebuilding networks of people we trust and still retain control over the diversity of our sources.
* In Bluesky I read retweets and comments to find new people to follow.
* I send content to friends and they send some back. I’ve found creators this way.
* Search for interesting topics, see who is generating content on those topics. Follow/subscribe if you’d like to see more.
Getting away from the algos is untenable if you use the mainstream internet in any capacity. The trick is to be more intentional about gaming them to your advantage. My feeds usually surface things I value because I am deliberate about what signals I reinforce. I don't engage with content that outrages or upsets me, so it doesn't show me it. Some people are rage addicts and want to get into a doom loop because it fulfills their psychological sense of certainty that things will only get worse. Other people are ignorant of the algorithms and how they work so they never realize it is presenting a distorted picture.
Having varied pipelines for information intake is important too. Forums like this that are non-algorithmic, doing your own searches, visiting websites you like directly, all of this lends itself to that end. No need to go luddite if you like your internet things. Just be conscious of consumption.
I think there is an obvious answer though: taking control of the algorithm via AI. I don't think we're there yet, but it's gotta be a matter of time until somebody makes a local AI agent that browses all these feeds and then filters them to your satisfaction (x% about politics, y% upbeat, z% violence, z% about video games).
LinkedIn already has this feature and it's significantly reduced the amount of rage-inducing influencer hot takes that show up on my feed. You can also turn off your watch history to get far fewer recommendations on Youtube.
I still personally find LinkedIn and Youtube to be a net-negative on my mental health, but these settings have helped a lot.
I wish Aaron Swartz were still here. Such an absolute injustice.
Even subreddits that don't deal with health conditions are going to skew a certain way over time just as a result of who hangs out there all the time and who is accepted, so the "reality" you see in a subreddit is not necessarily the true reality of the greater population. (Again, this should be obvious, but it's easy to forget this when you start reading a reddit post and thinking, "I don't agree with all these people, but there are many people with this opinion. Should I be thinking more like they do?")
Then, weird things started to happen. Some of the things I would post/comment would only get one upvote, and my posts would frequently get immediately removed by an auto-mod. A year or so later, Reddit updated their UI, and the posts with one upvote had a message from Reddit saying they were intentionally hidden.
I conclude it's most likely a combination of subreddits auto-blocking people who post in certain subs, and in some cases the Reddit spam algorithm going completely off the rails. I think a few of my blocked posts criticized Reddit or another social media platform, but most weren't really that notable.
That's true of any real community in the physical world, too.
I'd go as far as saying that it's impossible to have fully inclusive and 100% objectively fair community that's also interesting, or even a community. It's not how humans operate, it's not what they want from a community, and even trying to enforce this "perfection" would require infinite resources feeding an omnipresent bureaucracy to moderate perfect order and compliance into people.
His more important point is that recommendation algorithms combined with replies create terrible conversations. That helps explain why it's so hard to discuss anything complicated on social media.
>Taste is an abstract, ineffable, unstable thing. A listener to music or reader of a book cannot truly tell if they will enjoy something before they experience it; pleasure in a piece of art is never guaranteed. So when encountering an artwork, we immediately evaluate it by some set of mental principles, and, hopefully, find the beauty in it, feel affirmed, even if we can't quite describe what that beauty is or how exactly we determined it in the first place. Taste is supposed to be ambiguous. As the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben summarized in his 1979 monograph on taste, "Taste enjoys beauty, without being able to explain it."
and then
>As taste requires surprise, it also thrives on challenge and risk, treading too far in a particular direction. Safety may avoid embarrassment, but it's also boring.
and so
>The bounds of aesthetic acceptability become tighter and tighter until all that's left is a column in the middle. While popular styles shift, like moving targets, the centralization and normalization persist.
They’re more crude but it’s the same idea. You tell a company you like a general topic by choosing a channel, magazine, or section of the newspaper. They give you content that is curated. This curation is automatic and sophisticated in social media apps but is more manual in legacy media, but the idea is generally the same. At some point someone or something is taking a guess at what kind of content you want to see.
All of these forms of passive content involve advertiser influence just the same as social media algorithms.
Maybe algorithmic media isn’t always so alarmingly bad? Maybe it’s okay to have some downtime and just allow someone else to fill that time? It was acceptable for the comics section of the newspaper to waste some time in your day but it’s so harmful for for some silly meme content to do the same just because technology was involved in the latter.
Reverse chronological is sacrosanct and it will always remain ad free to keep incentives aligned with it being a place I like to spend time. Every tag also has its own RSS feed.
It's still invite-only, but anyone reading this page is obviously a great fit so here's an invite link: https://lynkmi.com/accounts/signup/?invite_code=333ee833-e3d...
Also tags are more personal like "tmoravec/cryptozoology" rather than a global "cryptozoology", so intentionally focused on keeping social circles smaller.
I can't remove the apps because I might need them to check something important or write someone, so I forced to use my willpower to skip these videos everyday.
Its especially interesting recently as Youtube encourages you to search for something before giving you recommendations, so you get to "seed" your session with topics you like. If nothing comes to mind I'll just start with Practical Engineering and go from there.
The only downside is that I can't "like" content to help the creators, since I'm not logged in
I no longer see Facebook, Instagram or X and I’m okay with that.
Socrates was even complaining about this, and it’s arguably far worse what is happening today than what he was seeing.
i am really against this notion. why do we have to surrender ourselves to this forced reality. i really don't find any other beneficial use of social media except of advertise and making profit. (personally i see it immoral to feed this evil machine and run away). so the only real solution is to delete social media altogether or don't tap on user's backs and guide them to more moderate use because it doesn't makes a difference.
My solution to the horrendous algorithmic recommendations that YouTube tees up these days is DF Tube (Distraction Free YouTube). It's a plugin available on the Firefox & Chrome app stores, perhaps others. As with all browser plugins, decide whether you're willing to trust the developer.
DF Tube goes the full mile by attacking the YouTube DOM and eliminating (with extreme prejudice) anything other than a search bar, a video, and core menu functions. That means the following are gone:
- Notification Bell - Feed - Autoplay - Trending - Comments/Live comments - Related videos
Here's a link to chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/df-tube-distraction...
Here's a link to firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings of ads and outrageous distractions
Or to take up arms against a sea of content creators and shit-miserable silicon valley tech bros
And by opposing end them. To blank out—to not be sure what you were trying to look up in the first place anymore
Perchance
1. Use social media at only one particular time of the day. Inside a strict time window. That's it. Even if you are sitting idly on a car, traveling, or even standing in a queue for something, don't open the scroller app. Just be. Even if you are sick and in bed, don't open the scroller. Make a conversation, read a book, watch a movie, listen to a talk, but never open the scroller. This I learned from Cal Newport, and at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I will say this has made my life better. And if you do this for some months, you will like the changes in your brain.
2. Don't consume any content without premeditated intent. Don't aimlessly scroll, ever. This point is there in the OP. I scroll a particular FB group only for ~10 ninutes a day. I scroll my very narrow CS/Math/Programming YouTube account for ~15 minutes and add videos to Watch Later. That's it.
If you took away the algorithms, I don't think you'd necessarily have a relaxing social media feed. You'd still have people sharing so-called "engaging" material and you'd still have to deal with "context collapse" and disagreeable discussions. I think the anonymous nature of online connections inherently make them more impersonal compared with actual face to face ones. And being constantly connected to other human beings digitally (even strangers) is incredibly addictive.
The complete lack of control by users of their feed makes Feed Providers publishers imo. Give me control or take responsibility for the content.
I know nothing about it, because exclusively use custom and niche feeds!
Long term, once we figure out how to generate feeds that are aren't socially corrosive dumpster fires. Mandate platforms default to using one of a set of approved models (maybe we need a recommendation engine benchmark that scores social divisiveness).
This sort of legislature could bankrupt a startup—and, by extension, discouragement investment—by driving them to pursue a technical achievement that's out of their league, and for potentially no reward.
As a space fan, I necessarily see a lot of people on Twitter who are blindly pro- or anti-Elon. Both types get blocked, not because I disagree with them but because I don't need that sort of rabid content in my feed.
Quick edit to add: block all parody accounts on Twitter as well. They almost never are actually worthwhile.
Also, did you know you can block advertisers on Twitter? It's very catarthic.
My parents and most of their generation experience it in a very similar way. I would say even despite missing out few cool things overall their life experience is better. Simpler, more positive.
I am aiming desperately for similar position. I dont care about coolest new tech unless i can/have to use it directly at my work. I stopped watching most of politics since there is no win there, just mental abyss. I know its sort of giving up, but I cant win this fight so why bother, just wait it out.
One effect I can see that comes with massive power - dont let orange man drag you into his pit of unstable misery, its like a black hole. Engaging with any related info has this effect. He is not exceptional in this, had exes with similar 'skill', but his power is a massive multiplier. Be stronger than him, for yourself and your closest ones.
I understand why this never happened (algorithms are, after all, optimized to the benefit of the company, not the user), but still it's a shame that this was never explored (at least not to my knowledge).
On the other hand, making a custom feed involves hosting your own server, not writing config in Bluesky itself: https://docs.bsky.app/docs/starter-templates/custom-feeds
You also need filtering to remove the manufactured pop-culture dross like the Kardashians that is the new opium of the people.
My point is, search still works. We don't have to take their feed, or even the feed we create following people. We can just search that shit out. And search results bookmarks in a folder work great for managing that.
Turned off "Discover" on my Android phone. Was weird first. I felt like I might miss out on something, some important bit of information. "Sometimes it does show me interested things" I thought. And, true, sometimes I get shown a scientific article that would missed otherwise.
But just like when I deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts years back, I did not miss any important event.
The solution is very simple, just limit the like count of posts in your feed.
https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5601-buil...
Only on Mastodon!
If you don’t have the ability to alter your feeds, taking a break from them is the next best thing.
So far that doesn't include any algorithms I've run into.
Social media is a cancer. It only benefits those who have the money to power the algorithms.
Suggest to someone that they turn off their phone and leave it at home, and watch them have an almost painful physical reaction.
Also, if you ever want to revisit a video, just use chromes history, but you'll find also this rarely happens if ever.
I haven't been on any kind of Facebook/Instagram/Twitter social network for several years now, I also encourage people to try giving it up for 2-3 months, and I wager that it will feel distinctly odd and uncomfortable if/when you return. From a naive person's perspective, social media is flat out strange. It's got its own culture, lingo, and social constructs that feel a little odd. It's easy to see how it might be manipulative in a lot of subtle ways. But I do admit I lost touch with some people whom I miss. Each person should find their own balance with algorithmically determined content feeds, but I am a firm believer it should be, on balance, less.
I'm happy places exist that let people be a little more creative, or allow me the same if I'm in the mood, but it's not something I want all the time. I really like places where I can simple order a #4 without any substitutions and my order is done. Growing up as a picky eater, I caught a lot of flack as a kid for substitutions; my orders never felt easy like other people. I like when my order can be easy.
Algorithmic content feeds are a much more important battle to fight, but "spend more effort on every single other decision too" is not gonna put people in a place to want to be more selective. It'll tire them out more and make them more likely to just put on the default idiot box feed.
see:
This is the actual reason why the door is continually held open for propaganda and centralized control. Decentralizing everything struggles with inefficiency problems.
The first person to really discover and popularize this was Edward Bernays — who invented Public Relations to help corporations and politicians weaponize this inefficiency. He kicked off the "Mad Men" of 20th century New York.
The introduction to Bernays's book "Propaganda" lays this out very clearly:
https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Bernays_Propaganda_in_en...
Or if you don't like reading... another overview of Bernays is Adam Curtis's "Century of the Self"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
We will keep giving up control to centralized forces until we can share information freely and efficiently about what choices lead to better/worse outcomes in a decentralized way.
But ordering pizza and getting news have different stakes anyway, so I think these problems should be handled differently. It is reasonable to offload pizza topping decisions, but we should try to learn a bit about the actual positions/competencies of our elected officials.
In general, I don't personally enjoy having to make decisions about particular ingredients when I go somewhere to eat. It's mental energy I don't want to have to expend. Not having any dietary restrictions, I personally prefer somewhere that offers a fixed set of items. I'd also say that when I was younger, I was afraid of making the wrong choices and didn't know what some ingredients were whenever I'd go somewhere that did have choices, so that added a little bit of anxiety.
There’s this concept of “babble and prune” (https://www.lesswrong.com/w/babble-and-prune) and I argue that for food (and probably most opinions…) the prune aspect is where your personal taste gets most expressed. So they are doing you a service by pre-babbling a set of options for you prune.
Maybe this framework can shed some sense :)
In other words: I’m just trying to get a good pizza, man, I’m not some kind of pizza artist.
I read a lot of online content, from all kinds of sources. Different types of content: short-form, long-form, memes, WaPo editorials, sports, politics, tech, stuff, weird stuff, off-beat, serious, rants, opinions, facts.
The most delightful experiences I've had is when something totally random pops in from someplace. It could come from anywhere, but I've noticed that the best surprises come from places like longreads.com, which collect good writing across a diverse set topics and sources. Pretty much all social platforms do a horrible job at this, and recommend content that is so similar to content I've already consumed that the additional value of that content is extremely low, often even negative.
I think the ideal algorithm for me would be randomly suggestions after filtering out the garbage. No ads disguised as journalism, no influencer content, no clickbait, no spam, no AI slop, etc. I would jump on a platform that does this immediately. Even better, if the platform allowed me to control the knobs on what I consider to be garbage and not garbage.
Too much disinfo: community notes and grok are IMO just running cover for the disinfo firehose.
Saw the highest profile figure on the platform (yes him) retweet the most knee jerk takes that could be easily fact checked, but weren’t.
Instead of getting upset or trying to fight it, I yanked out the algo slop cable and am back in the real world. It’s great.
Edit: I didn’t really use it before 2024, so I cannot comment on what it was like under the last management.
I also tend to seek out conflicting views to my own when reading books, so it’s not that I’m just raging at ‘the other side’ either.
It sounds too invasive. To violating. Too extreme. Too much power in the hands of the button holder.
But this is effectively what we’re doing with our phones and watches in particular. It’s one of the reasons I’ve disabled notifications on almost everything.
The electrodes aren’t necessary.
There will still be communities and fringe opinion and that is healthy. You won't have content generated just to push advertisements alone which is not.
