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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3997 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 23, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Just the general twitter algorithm being crappy I'd guess. I recently made the mistake of liking/interacting with a math puzzle tweet, and now I get tons of these retarded "99% can't solve this: 100/5(4-2)" engagement bait questions.

The exact same thing happened to me, but a few "Not interested in this post" clicks fixed it soon afterward. It still don't know how clicking "like" on some topology theorems could convince the algorithm that I really wanted to witness order-of-operations-confusion train wrecks too, but at least it was temporary.

And, whoa - did I manage to do the same on Facebook??? Last time I was on there I finally snapped, and instead of clicking "Block" on only the first "Suggested For You" slop before exiting, I went down my timeline and blocked AI image purveyors one after another after another. And now that I reconnect, to get a count of how much of their feed is algorithmic garbage as a negative contrast to Twitter, the count is 0%? Today there's literally nothing there but posts from friends and (not too many or too stupid, even!) sponsored ads. I'm not even seeing anything from the less repulsive sorts of "Suggested For You" that I hadn't blocked. Did Facebook happen to change their algorithm right as I got most fed up with it? Is their algorithm too dumb to guess that I won't want to play "find all the physically impossible or architecturally stupid details" in 20 AI log cabin pictures in a row, but not too dumb to realize when they pushed me over the edge? Could I have fixed this long ago if I'd just been more exhaustive about it earlier?

Probably close to a year ago, I noticed that Facebook has become better at serving me content I enjoy than it has been at any time since around 2010. The algorithm still isn’t perfect, but it’s gotten remarkably good.

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