[cyrus_]

We might consider more or less eliminating automated recommendation systems on social media and return to, as you put it, "just showing photos of puppies", i.e. just showing posts from entities that you have explicitly friended or followed. This won't entirely solve the problem of people coalescing into radical groups, but it might help if learning about the group required someone posting it to their feed for everyone to see.

[hunter2_]

The flip side is when your friends on the platform don't have enough interest in whatever interest of yours you're trying to learn more about... You go browsing groups and it needs to be sorted/ordered/tailored/suggested somehow unless you want some useless thing like alphabetical order. Should I join A1% Landscaping or Aaron's Aardvarks?

[meheleventyone]

So a search engine?

[hunter2_]

Having the list be seeded by your own thoughts means you're still sort of in your bubble. I'm talking about the (important, IMHO) use case of wandering through the world seeing what presents itself. Perhaps ordering by popularity makes sense (simply skip to page nnnn to discover unpopular groups) but that feels like it would also have downsides.

[asiando]

I don’t think recommendations are the only thing at fault here. You just need your uncle Frank to share a chemtrail article and someone will like it and reshare it. Maybe someone will start a chemtrail group and invite your uncle.

I think the engine speeds up discovery even for people who don’t have many connections, but if you’re already googling chemtrails chances are you’ll find your group.

Let’s not forget that 4chan has no recommendations, yet...

[cyrus_]

Sure. There is no way to eliminate whacko conspiracy theorists and fringe forums. They existed before social media too. The idea is that interpersonal dynamics can help manage these things: if your uncle Frank posts about chemtrails, then hopefully someone he trusts can point him in a different direction in the comments, and if not, at least the people reading it will see the comments. If Facebook just surfaces this information, you get none of this: click and boom you're in an alternative reality full of lizard people and humans in cosmic battle.