December 31, 2022

"The lightest batting-away of videos you don’t like in favor of ones you do goes on to influence the algorithm’s future range of offerings..."

"... in a way seemingly more sophisticated than the rudimentary logic of, say, YouTube rabbit holes. This has delivered a decisive blow to the centralized feeds of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et al.... The days of manually choosing whom to follow and what Netflix genres you’re interested in will be rendered quaint; soon we’ll simply be escorted down the internet burrow supposedly of our choice, and quite happily so. The rapid deterioration of Twitter under Elon Musk’s ownership signals the incoming death of at least one centralized feed, particularly when no one can agree on a worthy alternative.... There’s a part of us that senses all of this and is seeking a less fleeting connection elsewhere. We reach for one another in Discord servers, shady Close Friends allusions, invite-only newsletters, and meme accounts...."

Writes Delia Cai in "The Year TikTok Made the Multiverse Real (And Murdered the Newsfeed in the Process)/As TikTok and its cunningly customized rabbit holes subsume culture, the rest of the internet will splinter further into algorithmic isolation" (Variety).

34 comments:

Drago said...

"The rapid deterioration of Twitter under Elon Musk’s ownership...."

LOL x ∞!

It appears "rapid deterioriation" has now been redefined to mean "no longer under absolute authoritarian leftist control".

JAORE said...

"The rapid deterioration of Twitter under Elon Musk’s ownership..."

I often see similar claims.

No evidence.

Lot's of claims.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Or you could stop shoveling your brains full of shit.

If you see the dystopia coming and you embrace it, you deserve your fate.

2023 is going to be analog for me, y’all. Got a beautiful world to explore and two thousand books in this house. Internet for work only, not for socializing or entertainment. Peace and love to all of you.

Quayle said...

“The rapid deterioration of Twitter under Elon Musk’s ownership...."

I cite to the fact that we all agree it has rapidly deteriorated.

The evidence of the “networked” generation.

Iman said...

I guess de-evolution IS real…

Joe Smith said...

'...rapid deterioration of Twitter...'

Wishful thinking.

Besides, Twitter is not a video-driven platform as anyone with an IQ above room temperature would know...

bobby said...

If they can algo you into what you like, they can algo you out of what they don't wish you to see.

Twitter seems to be losing that battle, which is why she now dislikes it.

Believe her when she tells you she wants to enslave people.

Wince said...

soon we’ll simply be escorted down the internet burrow supposedly of our choice, and quite happily so.

Way ahead of the curve, maybe the B-52s missed it by just one letter?

I'm livin' on Channel Xi

Getting nothing but static
Static in my attic from Channel Xi

Take my money away!

I know i feel a change is happening---something good will happen
I feel love is coming on strong, and I want it
We can make it happen
I want the world to change for me---gotta get away---away from Xi
Living on the edge of --- Xi
Channel Xi all static all day forever---time to open your windows,
Let in better weather
Time to take disinformation and shove it in the shredder

Fred Drinkwater said...

Dear I Have...
We'll miss you. With all your new-found free time, I hope you find what you're looking for. And your pants.

rcocean said...

The party line has been handed down, and from now on, Twitter/Musk will be getting the "Trump treatment". That is, every chance they get some dig, insult, or random negative remark about Musk/Twitter will be inserted into every MSM article.

So, Variety has to take a random jib at Musk/Twitter, I'm not sure how it fits, but then its not supposed to.

Sebastian said...

"The rapid deterioration of Twitter under Elon Musk’s ownership"

Sure. Exposing pre-Musk prog malfeasance counts as deterioration to progs.

Michael K said...

Anybody who reads "Variety" for news needs help.

iowan2 said...

I hope its just my raw ignorance of how this works, or full dementia has settled in on me.

I cant get the connection between how my viewing history of TV is affected by twitter.

n.n said...

Seemingly more sophisticated, indeed. Variety is hoping that people adopt a curated offering, steering us to their favored democratic/dictatorial ideology. As for Twitter, it's still viable. News of planned avianhood are premature and phobic.

cassandra lite said...

"The rapid deterioration of Twitter under Elon Musk’s ownership" tells me all I need to know about Delia. Ergo, observations disregarded.

gilbar said...

The rapid deterioration of Twitter under Elon Musk’s ownership

Assumes facts, not in evidence

Mark O said...

HAPPY NEW YEAR, Ann. Thanks for all the wonderful stories and comments.

Original Mike said...

I'm always batting away videos, covering what I'm trying to read and wasting my bandwidth. Why the video fixation? Don't youngsters read?

Leland said...

Paid propaganda I guess masquerading as an article in Variety but then I'm not sure if any article in Variety is not paid propaganda.

Sheridan said...

No social media for me! Unless Prime, Netflix and Disney count. They must use algorithms because they all tell me what I should watch based on "viewing habits". I ignore those recommendations and watch the few shows my wife also wants to watch. I calculate that of the 50,000 TV shows, specials and movies (okay slightly exaggerated) offered by the "premiums" my wife is willing to watch maybe only 5 (yes five). So instead of spending an hour looking for something we can both watch we just turn-on music (folk and country-western) and enjoy each others company. She crochets and I read/listen to a book. If I have any dread its that Ann may someday be replaced by a computer algorithm that will turn me into a Zuckerberg drone. Yikes! BTW Happy New Year!!

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

When there are no consequences for being wrong. It’s almost as if being wrong is incentivizing more wildly erratic predictions.

minnesota farm guy said...

What a bunch of lemmings we have turned into. Being an old curmudgeon I can safely say that I have not, nor will I ever, use social media. Nevertheless I feel that Musk is doing us all a great service by exposing the government/ Twitter channel. There are a bunch of people in the Twitter/MSM universe that need to grow up.

Dude1394 said...

Democrats are pretty damn impressive in their propaganda. Elon/Desantis are the next bogey-man and they can get their names into any article they publish.

Propagandists all.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

There’s a TikToker with a phd who TikToked her annoyance at people tagging a particular scientist (who happens to be male) to her TikToks. I thought were woke mostly.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Elon’s underground tunnels are closing in.

J Melcher said...

Oh please. In the "good ol' days" of US reporting, a city might have half-a-dozen newspapers and each would have a slant opposed to the others. See the press room parody of "The Front Page" (a pro-communist paper. an anti-communist paper. A paper that sneers at both those. A paper more worried about the sheriff's nepotism...)

We now have one news source per city and every Sunday every one of them parrots some article from the NY Times. Censorship or just group-think, we have a lot less diversity and perspective in this century than 100 years ago.

boatbuilder said...

Does the word "China" appear anywhere in the piece? I'm guessing no...

MikeR said...

"The rapid deterioration of Twitter under Elon Musk’s ownership" Seems like he's rapidly putting in one improvement after another. I see no deterioration, except of course for the loss of political censorship.

AimHighHitLow said...

Twitter was a dumpster fire before Musk purchased. Whether he can rescue it or not remains to be seen, but beyond the Twitter Files, this platform is THE place to stay informed on an increasing array of stories. ChatGPT and the FTX collapse more notably, and probably more to come. Musk may be able to take a dying platform and resurrect it from the ashes. Nothing certain, but it is vastly more useful under his ownership than the Bay Area progressives that ran that shop into the ground.

madAsHell said...

The rapid deterioration of Twitter under Elon Musk’s ownership signals the incoming death of at least one centralized feed, particularly when no one can agree on a worthy alternative....

People that don't understand free speech. It seems to flourish among women.

Temujin said...

What Delia doesn't understand about Elon and Twitter could fill an arena. He's just getting the thing cleaned up, shined up, and ready to change. In multiple ways. Re-read her article a year from today.

Kate said...

Google is what's deteriorated. I used to be able to search on an assortment of random words (years ago) and get pages of weird hits. Now, I get one page and it's all the same topic. Every IoT tries to help, and with each iteration they get worse and worse at helping.

Jefferson's Revenge said...

Kate at 4:52 am is correct. About 5-6 years ago Google changed the way they rank things, especially businesses. In the past you could Google “plumbers near Des Moines” and get a list of plumbers. Some were identified clearly as ads, and usually ignored, and the others ranked by reasonably objective criteria like popularity, new content and SEO techniques designed by Google so that the first page or two were almost always active businesses that invested in their own web side and brand. It was a game but a reasonably fair and honest game.

The same search now leads to ads and aggregator sites like Yelp, which are mini ads in themselves. I have no idea why they did that but it led to a less useful experience.

Marcus Bressler said...

I don't mind suggestions that are based on my viewing habits. On Audible.com, despite close to 1000 books in my library that I have listened to, I keep getting suggestions for books about feminists, autobiographies of people in their 20s that I have never heard of, and the latest LGBT author or whatever the alphabet crap designation is now.

Marcus B. THEOLDMAN