• SpaceCowboy
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    2 months ago

    Yeah but you can only get controlled absurdist bizarre stuff. It’s not people recommending things to you, it’s an algorithm that’s controlled by people with dubious intentions.

    Sure you’ll see memes and funny stuff, but only the ones that have been approved by an unseen algorithm. So it’s the appearance of randomness, but not actually random.

    • huginn@feddit.it
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      2 months ago

      The quality of a meme recommended by a tuned algorithm well exceeds the quality of leekspin on its own, much less in the quantity served.

      Don’t use this shit for your news or to inform your world view but use it to fuck around and enjoy yourself. That’s the point. It’s an endless feed of human creativity and the bizarre. Using it for the serious is the worst way to interact with it.

      Who cares if it’s a human recommending it to me - it’s a human making it and I’m here for the creators not the middlemen.

      • SpaceCowboy
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        2 months ago

        You’re saying there’s no potential for anyone to put a spin on the memes you’re consuming? You believe it’s not having any kind of influence on you in any way?

        • huginn@feddit.it
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          2 months ago

          Everything always has a spin. It’s important to be critical.

          That’s different than being paranoid that the CCP is controlling my mind by showing me a dog waking up it’s owner at 3am with a bowl in its mouth followed by a truck saying “Fresh milk inside” and then a stereotypical Los Angeles Latino gangster wearing an It mask and huffing from a red balloon in a storm sewer followed up with a woman in purple talking about Victorian street slang.

          You’re being influenced by commenters on lemmy you should probably log off you can never be too careful. I’m actually a CIA psyop here to convince you that TikTok is bad by using reverse psychology.

          • SpaceCowboy
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            2 months ago

            It’s what you don’t see that’s significant too. Someone from Taiwan making a funny meme that might make you feel like Taiwan is a cool place that you wouldn’t want something bad to happen there? Probably not going to see that. Someone in Hong Kong being nostalgic about when their vote actually made a difference? Not going to see it. A Uighur just talking about their day to day life. Not going to see it.

            Everyone knows people have a limited amount of time to consume information. If they fill up that time with anything and everything other than the things they don’t want you to be thinking about, they can erase these things from public consciousness.

            China is full of fun and happy people! Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Uighur people? Never heard of them!

            When it’s a person discussing things with you rather than a very small set of algorithms controlled by a very small group of people, you’ll hear about things you might not hear about from an algorithm. Sure it’s determined by what the person you’re talking to knows about and what they care about, so it’s very random. But at there’s at least there’s a probability you’ll hear about things that are inconvenient to the powerful people for you to know about.

            • huginn@feddit.it
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              2 months ago

              I have family in Taiwan, (and get Taiwanese content constantly) that’s not a convincing argument. Thanks.