The lack of nuance is killing all these sites for me, not just Netflix, which I gave up on managing. It's when sites carefully note what I look at, and start making drastic changes based on that.

It's like if I go for a walk, metaphorically, and I see a giant pile of shit, and that's a genuinely interesting thing to see, because Jesus Christ that is huge. Then the algorithm notices I stopped to look at that, and the next time I go for a walk everything is filled with shit. That's what my Instagram feed is right now, metaphorically speaking. A never-ending field of shit.

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BuyMyBitcoins 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

I use a custom filter in uBlock Origin to hide the recommended sidebar in YouTube (all except the video of what’s next). Even so, there will occasionally be a video in search results with a topic that might be interesting from a channel I don’t normally watch.

I’ve learned to right click and open the link in a private browsing window so that my search results (and that one remaining sidebar thumbnail) do not become poisoned by that one channel/topic.

It’s insane that clicking on one video makes YouTube think that I’m now obsessed with that channel. And, it’s going to fixate on that for the next few weeks.

	▲	lifefeed 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		That's another thing I'm tired of: manually managing the algorithm. Using private windows, on top of downvoting and hiding stuff I only wanted to see once. I like the "idea" of the algorithm, something that finds cool stuff for me. In practice it's just one more thing I have to keep a mental model of.

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compiler-guy 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It doesn't even have to be a pile of shit; it could be something that was interesting by itself, but that doesn't mean I want a deep dive.

This happened to me with youtube and feral hog trapping. A two-minute video of that showed up in my feed, and yeah, it was interesting to see how and why it was done. But my feed was full of that for a long time, and even now, years later, one will pop up just desperately trying to get me to re-engage.

It was interesting as a one off, not as a way of life.

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Gooblebrai 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This made me think of how dystopic would be a virtual reality with an algorithm that behaves like this to give the user more of what they pay attention to

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szidev 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In this same vein, the other day I pulled up a Crowded House station and Spotify's assumption was that I wanted to hear only Australian musicians, not that I wanted to listen to 80's and 90's rock.

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pessimizer 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm astonished that the tactics are still so dumb. I buy a dining room table and forever after the site is recommending dining room tables.

	▲	chmod775 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		My amazon front page is all about electric shavers, lamps, and various usb cables right now. I just bought all of that, why would I want more?
	▲	jjulius 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		This is what most ads that seem to be "targeted ads" are for me. I buy a thing, and then two weeks later all of the targeted ads are for the thing I bought weeks ago and no longer need.