[8fhdkjw039hd]

Growing up, the internet did not feel real to me. Just a collection of memes fighting each other, fire-walled from reality. It seemed like an entertaining farce but not real.

This was relatively true for the internet I grew up with, but it is certainly not true now. What happened in the capital was quite a wake up call. And much of the blame for it does look to be the result of things like click-through maximization and engagement maximization pushing people towards extremes, things like karma and likes allocating status to those staking out extreme positions. It is a terrifying thing to think about, but if you start thinking of social media influencers and followers as a sort of client-patron relationship, the historical precedents are not comforting.

For myself, I am coming to terms with the fact that I cannot really trust any opinions that have been inculcated in me during the wild years of social media. I have deleted my Reddit and Facebook accounts, have diligently trained the YouTube algorithms to avoid any even remotely political content. I no longer trust myself to develop sensible opinions in such an adversarial environment and am doing my best to just not have political opinions and focus on simple things like maths and programming.

Steve Omohundro had a talk recently where he described the need for "personal AIs" to help individuals resist manipulation from corporate AIs maximizing engagement. Perhaps once such things like this exist, I will allow myself to have opinions. But until then, I don't think I have any hope of making sense of this cacophony tuned for my engagement. Until I get such a thing, this will be my last post on HackerNews.

[jacobobryant]

> Steve Omohundro had a talk recently where he described the need for "personal AIs" to help individuals resist manipulation from corporate AIs maximizing engagement.

This reminds me of The Big Promise of Recommender Systems (2011) [1]:

> However, when we look at the current recommender systems generation from the point of view of the “recommendee” (users’ side) we can see that recommender systems are more inclined toward achieving short-term sales and business goals. Instead of helping their users to cope with the problem of information overload they can actually contribute to information overload by proposing recommendations that do not meet the users’ current needs or interests. ...

> The window of opportunity is now open to innovate in a third generation of recommender systems that act directly on behalf of their users and help them cope with information overload.

I'm working on something in this space myself[2] (an essay recommender system). I think part of the solution is having recommender systems that are decoupled from publishing; e.g. a video recommender that suggests videos across multiple, unaffiliated sites, instead of the recommender that's built into YouTube.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marc_Torrens/publicatio...

[2] https://essays.findka.com

[Bakary]

You are making a political statement and following a defined political outlook without realizing it.

In any case, I would not worry as the chance of being in a situation where political opinions actually matter is quite low for most people

[laurent92]

So you are withdrawing yourself from having political opinions or learning about it. It also means you will follow what feels right, for example in promoting equality or getting rid of USA’s extreme elements at work. Since you do not decide for yourself, you will accept whatever is introduced to you as extreme elements.

Isn’t that the very definition of totalitarianism? People who won’t make decisions based on ideas they articulate, but rather let themselves go to accept other people’s decisions?