People keep complaining about how their twitter feed is infested with politics or relationship discourse, how Youtube keeps showing them Anime Girl Butts: A 5 Hour Review, or Facebook serves them up AI generated slop that clueless old-people upvote. They bemoan the tyranny of the Algorithm and talk about how social media companies are Out To Get You. That said Algorithm is fiendishly clever. That said Algorithm only cares about what grabs your attention, not what you want. That said Algorithm sucks.
To which I say: Maybe you suck. Have you ever thought about that, eh, Lesswrong? No, seriously, consider it. Maybe this is just a skill issue? Maybe you’ve put your locus of control into FAANG’s hands and are wondering where things went wrong? Maybe you don’t know how to interface with algorithms? Maybe you don’t focus on what you want to see more of?
The answer is yes.
[1]And you’re in luck, because I’ve invested literally any effort at all into using algorithms. Which, shockingly, is enough to not only beat back the trash infesting the rest of your feeds, but remove it all together.
I’ll give you an example. You know what was the last big issue I had with my feed? Too much art. I was literally inundated by a sea of beautiful things. That’s it.
How horrible.
You can outwit social media algorithms. They are little ML systems that generalize poorly, suffer from catastrophic forgetting, and only give results as good as the data they get. They’re dumber than my friend’s sister’s friend’s dog. And like a dog, you can train them if you try, literally at all.
OK, time to stop insulting you and get to what you should do.
2 Giving Useful Advice
Treat social media algorithms as if they’re a student or a dog. Literally view it as pavlovian conditioning[2].
You have two core options: show the algorithm what you want to see more of, and show it what you want to see less off. There are several, platform dependant ways to do this. Take Twitter as an example: Twitter treats the following as “show me more of this”, in roughly ascending order: what you spend time looking at, what you click on, what you reply to, what you like, who you follow and what you retweet/quote. Conversely, it treats the following as “show me less of this”: what you ignore, who/what words you mute, what you say you’re not interested in. These are your tools. Especially likes/retweets. Youtube is similar, but it lets you dislike things.[3]
On the margin, do not treat these as expressing social approval/disavowal. Humans will interpret a retweet or a like as a social act. The algorithm will not. This can suck for the people you’re interacting with. A dislike can weigh heavily on scrappy young Youtubers, and indeed result in Youtube deciding to stop promoting their video. But if you want control of your feed, you must be willing to negatively reinforce what you don’t want to see, and positively reinforce what you go. Not what you think is socially acceptable. Not what you should want. What you actually want. [4]
The algorithm will immediately show you more of what you engaged with. If you click like on a piece of art, it will start showing you some art ~ immediately. If you click on another, it will show you even more. And then if you like it on top of that, it will get extremely excited and flood your feed with art. The algorithm is dumb.
You are almost certainly far too focused on what you don’t want to see, and are by default telling the algorithm that you do want to see whatever engages you. This is how you get bait.
The algorithm doesn’t generalize well. If you click on a piece of art, it will just start showing you vaguely related art stuff. It doesn’t that know you are a fine connoisseur of AsukaxShinji mpreg pics. It just knows you like something vaguely anime related. Perhaps even NGE related. And that’s what it will show you. Take me: I clicked on a video about the economics of nuclear reactors, and watched the whole thing and clicked “like”. My Youtube feed then showed me 5 more videos about nuclear economics. The algorithm is really dumb.
Likes are super-weapons which can radically alter your feed: use them wisely.
The twitter algorithm will stop showing you things after a couple of days pretty quickly if you don’t engage with them. Youtube, somewhat less so, but it will still do it.
Use negative reinforcement signals to clean your feed. Do so with extreme prejudice. Do this as soon as you start seeing signs the algorithm is showing you new sorts of content you dislike.
You will regularly have to “clean-house” and re-teach the algorithm what you like because you slipped up and spent 10 minutes reading a Hegelian e-girl’s synthesis of the dialectic between Trump and Greenland out of morbid curiosity.
After cultivating a habit of telling the algorithm what you want to see more of, you may find it starts to become intuitive.
“Oh, I shouldn’t click on this politics thread, that will just show me more rage-bait.”
“Wait, I don’t actually like this guy’s tweets. In fact, they’re low signal. Muted.”
“Click on profile. Like 8⁄10 tweets. Follow.”
At which point, you too will feel a sense of distance when people complain about how terrible their “For You” feed is.
With thanks to norvid_studies, kit, imit, @Croissanthology, @Tomás B., @lsusr, tassilo and Taylor G. Lunt for giving feedback.
A friend notes that this post reminds them of a common “two-lens view of poverty, diet and weight, …, that is: for any person, ordinal personal factors always ‘cause’ why they’re somewhere in the distribution of people. but at the same time ‘the economy’ or ‘the food environment’ move the entire distribution. and in secular fashion will raise or lower everyone independent of the individual treading water. that’s how i’d think about ‘algorithms’ funneling and translating attention into semi stable loops. that said there is plenty of room to blame the user.” This is a good point, and as AI gets better, I expect the skills required to interface with SM algorithms to become too high for anyone unless we’re watched over by machines of loving grace. Even now for some poor souls, learning to train social media algorithms is too great a challenge. Frankly, we were dealt a bad hand with the social media landscape we got. Yet it is still possible to win with a bad hand. This article is not for the poor souls who can not. It is for you, dear reader. You are strong enough to win.
A fellow traveller on Twitter tells me that my advice basically doesn’t work for Instagram as its algorithm is much harder to train. I’m going to stick my neck out and say “skill issue”, but he may well be right. It wouldn’t shock me if some algorithms are more inclined to slop.
Of course, the optimal amount of control of your feed is not 100%. You can, and should, somtimes use the tools available to you to engage in digital social life at the expense of confusing the algorithm.
Maybe social media algorithms don’t suck
1 Insulting my Readers
People keep complaining about how their twitter feed is infested with politics or relationship discourse, how Youtube keeps showing them Anime Girl Butts: A 5 Hour Review, or Facebook serves them up AI generated slop that clueless old-people upvote. They bemoan the tyranny of the Algorithm and talk about how social media companies are Out To Get You. That said Algorithm is fiendishly clever. That said Algorithm only cares about what grabs your attention, not what you want. That said Algorithm sucks.
To which I say: Maybe you suck. Have you ever thought about that, eh, Lesswrong? No, seriously, consider it. Maybe this is just a skill issue? Maybe you’ve put your locus of control into FAANG’s hands and are wondering where things went wrong? Maybe you don’t know how to interface with algorithms? Maybe you don’t focus on what you want to see more of?
The answer is yes.
[1]And you’re in luck, because I’ve invested literally any effort at all into using algorithms. Which, shockingly, is enough to not only beat back the trash infesting the rest of your feeds, but remove it all together.
I’ll give you an example. You know what was the last big issue I had with my feed? Too much art. I was literally inundated by a sea of beautiful things. That’s it.
You can outwit social media algorithms. They are little ML systems that generalize poorly, suffer from catastrophic forgetting, and only give results as good as the data they get. They’re dumber than my friend’s sister’s friend’s dog. And like a dog, you can train them if you try, literally at all.
OK, time to stop insulting you and get to what you should do.
2 Giving Useful Advice
Treat social media algorithms as if they’re a student or a dog. Literally view it as pavlovian conditioning[2].
You have two core options: show the algorithm what you want to see more of, and show it what you want to see less off. There are several, platform dependant ways to do this. Take Twitter as an example: Twitter treats the following as “show me more of this”, in roughly ascending order: what you spend time looking at, what you click on, what you reply to, what you like, who you follow and what you retweet/quote. Conversely, it treats the following as “show me less of this”: what you ignore, who/what words you mute, what you say you’re not interested in. These are your tools. Especially likes/retweets. Youtube is similar, but it lets you dislike things.[3]
On the margin, do not treat these as expressing social approval/disavowal. Humans will interpret a retweet or a like as a social act. The algorithm will not. This can suck for the people you’re interacting with. A dislike can weigh heavily on scrappy young Youtubers, and indeed result in Youtube deciding to stop promoting their video. But if you want control of your feed, you must be willing to negatively reinforce what you don’t want to see, and positively reinforce what you go. Not what you think is socially acceptable. Not what you should want. What you actually want. [4]
The algorithm will immediately show you more of what you engaged with. If you click like on a piece of art, it will start showing you some art ~ immediately. If you click on another, it will show you even more. And then if you like it on top of that, it will get extremely excited and flood your feed with art. The algorithm is dumb.
You are almost certainly far too focused on what you don’t want to see, and are by default telling the algorithm that you do want to see whatever engages you. This is how you get bait.
The algorithm doesn’t generalize well. If you click on a piece of art, it will just start showing you vaguely related art stuff. It doesn’t that know you are a fine connoisseur of AsukaxShinji mpreg pics. It just knows you like something vaguely anime related. Perhaps even NGE related. And that’s what it will show you. Take me: I clicked on a video about the economics of nuclear reactors, and watched the whole thing and clicked “like”. My Youtube feed then showed me 5 more videos about nuclear economics. The algorithm is really dumb.
Likes are super-weapons which can radically alter your feed: use them wisely.
The twitter algorithm will stop showing you things after a couple of days pretty quickly if you don’t engage with them. Youtube, somewhat less so, but it will still do it.
Use negative reinforcement signals to clean your feed. Do so with extreme prejudice. Do this as soon as you start seeing signs the algorithm is showing you new sorts of content you dislike.
You will regularly have to “clean-house” and re-teach the algorithm what you like because you slipped up and spent 10 minutes reading a Hegelian e-girl’s synthesis of the dialectic between Trump and Greenland out of morbid curiosity.
After cultivating a habit of telling the algorithm what you want to see more of, you may find it starts to become intuitive.
“Oh, I shouldn’t click on this politics thread, that will just show me more rage-bait.”
“Wait, I don’t actually like this guy’s tweets. In fact, they’re low signal. Muted.”
“Click on profile. Like 8⁄10 tweets. Follow.”
At which point, you too will feel a sense of distance when people complain about how terrible their “For You” feed is.
With thanks to norvid_studies, kit, imit, @Croissanthology, @Tomás B., @lsusr, tassilo and Taylor G. Lunt for giving feedback.
A friend notes that this post reminds them of a common “two-lens view of poverty, diet and weight, …, that is: for any person, ordinal personal factors always ‘cause’ why they’re somewhere in the distribution of people. but at the same time ‘the economy’ or ‘the food environment’ move the entire distribution. and in secular fashion will raise or lower everyone independent of the individual treading water. that’s how i’d think about ‘algorithms’ funneling and translating attention into semi stable loops. that said there is plenty of room to blame the user.” This is a good point, and as AI gets better, I expect the skills required to interface with SM algorithms to become too high for anyone unless we’re watched over by machines of loving grace. Even now for some poor souls, learning to train social media algorithms is too great a challenge. Frankly, we were dealt a bad hand with the social media landscape we got. Yet it is still possible to win with a bad hand. This article is not for the poor souls who can not. It is for you, dear reader. You are strong enough to win.
For a case study in pavlovian conditioning, see @lsusr’s post Training My Friend To Cook. (His friend was glad of it.)
A fellow traveller on Twitter tells me that my advice basically doesn’t work for Instagram as its algorithm is much harder to train. I’m going to stick my neck out and say “skill issue”, but he may well be right. It wouldn’t shock me if some algorithms are more inclined to slop.
Of course, the optimal amount of control of your feed is not 100%. You can, and should, somtimes use the tools available to you to engage in digital social life at the expense of confusing the algorithm.