💾 Archived View for altesq.net › ~masqq › gemlog › 2022-05-17.gmi captured on 2022-06-03 at 23:02:40. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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today's society and its digital platforms thrive on engagement. what's the most engaging thing? content that produces the extremes of human emotions. usually, that is, borderline gore, blantant clickbait that induces rage, acting like the end of the world is near, arguing online about useless things, and the list can go on.
the algorithms of digital platforms, are tuned to keep producing the longest user engagment. systematically, they've learned that the biggest user engagement is at posts that trigger the biggest human emotions. that can be sadness, joy, hating the other etc. this is clearly seen, with the online promotion of blantant illegal acts, rage-fuelled discussions, overly sad events.
they obviously exist and cannot be ignored, but is it healthy to have them delivered to you non-stop, one after the other? no. the best example of user engagement when something happens, is the recent sad event, in a certain part of the world. platforms, knowing the users will "miss out", are profiting off this fomo (fear of missing out) of the reader, which results in them engaging in long sessions of "doom scrolling." it can be defined as: "doomscrolling or doomsurfing is the act of spending an excessive amount of screen time devoted to the absorption of negative news." when extreme events happen, many begin consuming the content everyday, then the engagement ratio skyrockets, which in turn boosts profits, and it's a vicious cycle, all at the cost of the reader's sanity. the more it is outraging, the more likely the user is to engage in the conversation, or with the post itself, then the more time they spending arguing, the more ads they see. platforms don't care about the mental wellbeing of their users, they just care about making profits.
all the promotion of these outlandish, so called "news", leads to instigating violence, people not getting along, and overall alienating a person from their peers. the more people are not uniting, the easier they're to manipulate and less likely to unite against a central opressor, or to fight for a common good. as the old saying goes, "divide and conquer."
i think there is, obviously, some value in staying informed, but we were not made to be connected and being "fed" various information, for about 10 hours a day, a probably conservative estimate for some people. reading news or interacting with others online, once or twice a week, is more than enough, in my opinion. we need to be alone with our thoughts, and not run from them.
i can firmly say that setting an amount of time you can spend on x task is a good method to not get engaged in doom scrolling, silly heated debates, or other harmful time consuming behaviour. if you can, set up an rss feed, you can see updates without any "features" of modern websites, like tracking, ads, and the various individuals inhabiting them. if you're a terminal lover like me, i wholeheartedly recommend newsboat as an rss reader, it's easy to set up, configure with your favourite
programs, and it works with vim keybindings! you can quickly check the updates, then you close it, and you don't end up dragged in the platform's algorithms. for now, and hopefully for the foreseeable feature, platforms will keep providing rss/atom feeds, although the number has decreased since rss's peak. it can end up being a huge timesaver, so i encourage you to try it, if you don't use rss already! or even better: use gemini, no ads, no tracking, no algorithms. my favourite gemini-based tech outlet is techrights[1], which covers all the technological related updates you'd need in a quick and easy fashion to discover, without bombarding you with "subscribe to us" or other annoyances.
although i dislike big tech platforms, helping people reduce their time spent there is a first-step towards, what can be called, technological and psychological freedom. here are the most useful ones:
i recommend you to stop consuming these altogether, although if for a reason you must keep on using them, use rss. don't get entangled in algorithms that manipulate you.
as a conclusion, don't let proprietary algorithms run your life. or ruin.
oh, and also, thank you for the engagement with my other post, "the disappearence of sincere conversations", i didn't expect it to gain any traction at all. it's a good feeling to know there are others that think like this. thank you!
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