[josephg]

Yes - Australian here. We started this, somehow.

I agree. I’d much rather if we simply banned personalised algorithmic feeds, for everyone. They’re the new smoking. They’re toxic to mental health and to society more broadly. They’re no good for adults or children - so no need for age checks for any of it.

YouTube and Facebook could still work. Just show the channels I’m subscribed to instead of whatever an AI thinks will drive me toward addiction. Even YouTube’s recommended “watch next” could survive. They’d just have to base the recommendations on what the viewer population as a whole enjoy instead of putting me personally in a bubble.

[netdevphoenix]

The personalised feeds is the whole point of their reason of being. No personalisation no profits. There just isn't a world where these huge companies can exist without personalised feeds. Meta platforms as well as YT would die and you would have instead something like Nebula which you pay for like Netflix but offers content creators content. Most people wouldn't pay for Nebula and so, you are back to the original point. People would put pressure to restore personalised feeds. Everyone supports these bans until they are the target of them.

This isn't a technological problem but a human one. The fundamental problem is that we haven't developed generalisable, scalable and profitable business models on the internet that aren't toxic.

[josephg]

Not true. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter were all successful products before they added personalised algorithmic feeds. Facebook just showed you everything by your friends. Twitter showed your follows (like bsky) and YouTube showed your channels.

The personalised algorithmic junk came later. It was never required for the websites to be wildly popular.

[hdgvhicv]

But popular does not mean profitable.

You would go on Facebook for 5 minutes and catch up with your friends. Great.

That’s not much time to shovel adverts. Better to get you engaged with ragebait or cute kittens or whatever keeps you on the site for an hour or 5.

[josephg]

Alright. So? If facebook can’t pull a profit without being a blight on society, they don’t deserve to be in business.

[hdgvhicv]

Sure. But that’s why they do it.

[josephg]

Yes, I know social media companies make money hand over fist by optimising for addiction. Just like cigarettes and gambling.

If we banned personalised algorithmic feeds, I'm sure some social media companies would go out of business. I'm still waiting to hear any downside.

[netdevphoenix]

Successful and profitable are not the same thing.

[Gigachad]

The tech isn’t that expensive or complex. Email didn’t have to add all this junk to be sustainable.

Something like the original Facebook where it’s just posts from your direct friends and no public content would be sustainable. It just wouldn’t make a trillion dollar company.