| Did you know how a news paper used to choose what articles it wanted to run? Do you know how a TV channel decides to schedule stories? Humans, its all humans. Looking at the metrics, and steering stuff that feeds that metric. Content filters are dumb and easy to understand. seriously, open up a fresh account at FB, instagram, twitter or tiktok. First it'll try and get a list of people you already know. Don't give it that. Then it'll give you a bunch of super popular but click baity influencers to follow. why? because they are the things that drive attention. if you follow those defaults, you'll get a view of whats shallow and popular: spam, tits, dicks and money. If you find a subject leader, for example a independent tool maker, cook, pattern maker, builder, then most of your feed will be full of those subjects, save for about 10% random shit thats there to expand your subject range (mostly tits, dicks, spam or money) What you'll see is stuff related to what you like and stare at. And thats the problem, they are dumb mirrors. Thats why you don't let kids play with them. Thats why you don't let people with eating disorders go on them, thats why mental health needs to be more accessible, because some times holding up a mirror to your dark desires is corrosive. Could filter designers do more? fuck yeah, be we also have to be aware that filters are a great whipping boy for other more powerful things. |