I want to train it to give me communist content, news, culture discussion from the leftist perspective, ect…basically this site. Never used it before so I’m asking before I do anything on it so I don’t mess it up with the initial searches or anything.
Never passively scroll. It will just feed you thirst-trap and drama content and will hole you. You have to feed it very specific content or look up whatever hashtags kids are using these days for things. And even then, DO NOT PASSIVELY SCROLL as the algorithm will always try to feed you back into more mainstream or rage-bait content. If you keep liking communist content, it will feed you right-wing content as well with the hope that you will comment on it, thus increasing your 'engagement'.
These are highly unregulated and highly sophisticated social engagement tools (TikTok especially is the closest thing I have ever observed or experienced to digital content crack, where I have lost three hours and remember literally nothing that I watched) and they will outsmart you if you are not constantly thinking two or three meta-levels deep, because I assure you the creators are. Programmers are mostly fixing bugs, but the makers of these engagement algorithms have studied all the classic reality show tricks and are very good at fucking with your insecurities and psychology.
Damn, I thought I was doing it wrong when I kept getting Carlson stuff in the feed after searching Xi Jinping Thought.
That’s wild tbh.
This is kind of shit that doesn't get talked about and what is actually the problem with these sites, they are absolute masters of psychological manipulation with the only premise being 'engagement' and it's aimed directly at kids.
I mean, it's been this way on the internet forever, TikTok isn't pioneering anything new here, but they are far more aggressive about it than any other site I've seen since Vine and they basically took Vine's format and perfected the engagement algorithms and it's GUI.
You can tell that that is the focus because it is absolute hell to try to look up specific TikTok videos, even worse than modern YouTube. It is about fire and forget consumption.
That’s a good point, well two good points, but I’m starting to see what you mean. During the initial session I found a parenti clip with the top half being a familiar yellow and the bottom half was gameplay from a Minecraft obstacle course. It fucking glued my eyes for 2 loops before my brain turned back on and swiped for another.
It’s honestly scary imagining stuff like that but it’s Carlson and gameplay being algorithmically shoved at kids.
Most of the younger people I know watch all their videos on 1.25x speed but then can't explain jack shit outside of the basics of what they watched. They are incredibly good at consuming content, but in general, absolutely shit about thinking about it at a meta level (why am I being shown this?) or even evaluating it higher than that (what kind of world view is this media building?).
I'm not sure what that means for the future, but it's weird to know people who spend all their time on the internet but don't know what a forum is outside of reddit.
They are incredibly good at consuming content, but in general, absolutely shit about thinking about it at a meta level
My cousin is a middle school teacher, she has talked about how her main priority is raising reading levels because that’s an issue now apparently. She works at a fancy private school and even the future fail sons of the rich are below age level for this.
I’m not sure what that means for the future, but it’s weird to know people who spend all their time on the internet but don’t know what a forum is outside of reddit.
Damn, I miss those super old school forums so much. Small Reddit style offshoots like this are cool too, but there’s just something about the format that led old school forums to have different vibes.
Oh yeah, I am absolutely convinced that most of my 19-year old coworkers (factory worker) are basically illiterate. Not functionally illiterate (although some of them are pretty close) but if you asked them to read and interpret something marginally complex it would just go in one ear and out the other. I also have a friend who is a high school teacher who despairs that her senior year students don't know what the difference between a primary or secondary source is. Basically zero media literacy. Based off of that, I have to imagine there is a literacy crisis in the U.S. that is being ignored simply because nobody is widely testing for it.
I miss not having likes or dislikes on forums, tbh.
That is honestly terrifying. With all the hate bait being peddled currently, the idea that a lot of young men are just going to passively take in the narrative can’t end well.
I agree, having to actually engage in order to express like/dislike seems like it fosters an environment of putting more effort in. Not having downvotes, but still getting to upvote stuff is a nice middle ground though. Reminds me of death stranding.
Occasionally I find myself getting pulled into Youtube shorts, and I struggle not to despair at the amount of traction that regurgitated misogynistic content I see being pushed gets. Literally just channel after channel dedicated to posting all the same terrible, stupid, arguments I remember seeing back on Youtube in 2008 but it says 'posted two weeks ago'. It really feels like time is just caught in a flat, rapidly accelerating, circle.
Again, idk where it leads, but imo 'china having access to our data' should be the last question that anybody in power is asking. Though, knowing our government, they will just be use it to try to target people for the military.
I’ll never understand what a normal person has to fear from a foreign government reading their emails or something. Only ghouls and the ghoul adjacent have any info they’d actually want. Of course none them actually care when I point the many ways our government has been caught doing mass surveillance and worse.
TikTok especially is the closest thing I have ever observed or experienced to digital content crack
I realized after using it for the first time that infinite scrolling is the creation of fucking Yakub. With Reddit or this site, the algorithm will put a certain number of posts on the front page every day and they will be relatively stable - at least for me, if I get to the bottom of the first page it feels like a good time to go do something else, and if I check in again later in the day 90% of the posts will be the same, limiting how long I spend here. Tiktok's algorithm on the other hand has so much content (a result of most of it being pretty low-effort) that it never has to show you the same post twice, and the infinite scroll never gives you a natural break in the action where you can tap out.
Anyway, China has the right idea with limiting kids to 3 hours of gaming during the week, but they don't go far enough. Limiting everyone's social media access should be seen as a common sense public mental health measure.
I deleted tiktok one day when I realized i'd been on it for 16 hours. It does not go well with unemployment, depression, and ADHD.
Exactly, it absolutely wants to doom-hole you and if you're not extremely careful and conscious about your consumption, it will. But the entire thing is set up to lull you into a state of unconscious scrolling so you have to actively fight with the app itself to engage with it in a conscious way, and I am a fully grown adult who is incredibly aware of what it is doing, I can't even begin to imagine how it affects kids, who, in my experience, aren't thinking about things with that level of manipulation. Maybe some of the more savvy ones are, but certainly not the majority.
Follow a handful of leftists. Like their stuff. Write a comment on them.
Skip stuff that looks rightist: Military, police copaganda, etc.
Like stuff about France and protests that will start to pop up.
Commenting increases content you receive significantly even if your comment is negative, such as commenting about fascist copaganda - you'll get more of it because they clearly see a comment as a positive type of engagement that they like.
That’s a good tip, I’ll try to restrain myself from telling people to fuck off and only be positive on good posts.
Lol, knowing the algorithm is training me to be more polite. Thanks president Xi!
It's a bit of a fuck to be honest I regularly responded giving it both barrels to british army and pig content on there and the result was that I got a fuck load more of it. I do not recommend, but on the plus side I'm very aware that the algo likes comments a lot.
Telling pigs to fuck off was a noble act of algorithmic self-sacrifice::fidel-salute-big:
Is there a list of lefty creators on tiktok? I followed hasan but I can't think of anyone else.
Far from a conclusive or even coherent list, but here’s a bunch of ones I follow. They range from explicit Marxist historians to trans rights experts to slightly left leaning comedians but they’ll get your for you page to the right place
loloverruled
notjustbikes
kaburbank
ebonywarriorstudios
theladyizdihar
koreanbeef27
travisshreffler
miloedwards3
victoriahammett
rebmasel
thepocketreport
kittykimz4
ben_brainard
underthedesknews
yellowparenti
erininthemorn
I do that a lot actually, but I’m also trying to see what the deal is since it’s so popular with young people.
Scrollable video is a super addicting design. There are less points where you need to make decisions because the video loops when it’s over, so your immediate choices are always to continue watching the current video or to move onto the next video. The difference is twitching your thumb a couple centimeters
On top of all that, the algorithm is just really raw and aggressive, so you’re generally aware of what topics and groups you’re being grouped in with. Their moderation is largely automated, which comes with the typical reinforcement of certain biases but you can also just… “feel” how they haven’t gone through the same process that last gen social media has of catering to old media capital and adjusting its algorithm through decades of controversies.
Basically, if you enjoy rabbit holes, it’s a fuckin trip. I’m currently taking a break because I gotta stay sane, but I am planning on getting back on soon
Thanks for the warning, although I am basically going into this with the intent of getting the algorithm to give me an endless scroll of parenti clips, PLA parades, and acab montages of people fighting cops
I don't plan on getting tiktok but a have a few male coworkers who have had it for a while and their feeds are all guys talking in their trucks, food, and women shaking their butts. Plus the odd video of someone getting hurt
A woman I know very well has told me her feed is currently only pedro pascal thirst traps and conspiracy theories that Brittany Spears is dead and all videos of her since a certain time are fake. Also she seems to think herself and everyone around her are autistic but I'm not going to try and figure that one out.
Finally my nieces and nephews are on it and the speed at which they scroll and interact with the app boggles my mind. I'm certain that the older ones at least are getting some very inappropriate content in their feeds.
From everything I've seen there's no way I'm downloading that app.
Edit: After hitting post I realized this doesn't help at all but oh well
No worries, the insight was appreciated. its always interesting to see how other people interact with or are influenced by tech.
Second the strategy to manually search up the types of videos you want the algorithm to recommend you and then like those videos and also watch them through the very end or at least longer than other types of videos you're not interested in
Make sure to "not interest" every type of video you don't like as well
Also be sure to check out the tags of videos you like or "not interest". If an Arab person makes a video about basketball but puts the hashtag #arab and you want to not interest because you don't like basketball, you'll also negatively train the algorithm on #arab. You can also like non-political videos if the user hashtags it with #communism because they're a communist
Kind of annoying but that's just the result of people not using hashtags properly
The hashtag information is useful. Somebody tagged a mercouris video with like 50 tags and now that you’ve pointed this out it explains a fair bit about what started popping up after.
Thanks for the advice.
Search by hashtags, and go like prolewiki videos to teach the algorithm 🥰
If you don't watch a video more than a few seconds (swipe down), the algorithm takes that as a signal you don't want to see this
If you like a video, the algorithm takes it as a sign you like the video and want to see more.
In my experience, it seems if you upload videos with a certain hashtag, you'll start seeing more of that hashtag.
follow creators in the genre you like too
Nowadays my fyp is mostly communist stuff but there's still the odd fascist shit that seeps through, because the algorithm is not quite there yet in differentiating.
Someone else said the fascist stuff is there to try and rage bait you. Maybe it is trained and that’s why because it knows you’ll hate it?
Honestly anything is possible with social media, the only way we know how algorithms work is by trying to reverse engineer them. Companies don't really publish how they work as it's a trade secret.
Exactly. All we know for sure is that it is driven by 'engagement' and that basically means all of the old tabloid tricks are also on the table alongside the newer digital engagement models that were pioneered by sites like Gawker, and we know based on interviews that Gawker used outrage as one of its primary engagement models.
TikTok loves a rabbithole but it will constantly push other stuff just to keep testing if you want to engage with the other side of the spectrum.
That’s true, glad I made the thread though. Learning a lot of stuff so far. Going to keep in mind that the exact mechanics are secret though, it’s a good point.
Probably just the statistical pattern of engagement. People who like communist content are probably likely to troll/argue with/debunk or otherwise engage with fascist posts by commenting on them, and the algorithm won't be able to tell the sentiment of the comment without costly and mostly useless sentiment analysis. These type of algorithm generally do not "know" anything about the meanings of specific tags, only the statistical relationships that emerge in how users who like them interact with other posts. Which is funny because it means that it can do rage bate simply because it works without any human ever intending it to (but of course, no human stopping it either).
I don't have tik tok but my guess would be to use the manual search for topic or user you want then when it feeds you videos interact with the ones you enjoy. Like the video, view the comments, look at the posters profile or whatever and that should tell the algorithm what youre interested in and feed you similar content
search boy boy or parenti
Ok, for some reason I thought manual search and the unsearchable feed were separate. That sounds like it should be easier than I thought. Thanks
