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The algorithm is like your grandma that one time you said you liked the pie she baked and next time you come over there’s 20 pies of different flavors, no food, and you really didn’t even want dessert
Exactly. The programmers can’t fathom that people might actually be complex beings, capable of interest in wildly different, seemingly unrelated things, or that if we’ve already experienced one of (a), then we’ve had our fill of it, and that’s the one thing for sure you know we don’t want more of.
I was so excited to see Adam here. We loved Adam Ruins Everything, and he’s still on the job. I learn something new, every time I’d see him. I’m 70 years old, & my curiosity is as strong as it was when I was 10. Learning new things every day brings me joy, so thank you, Adam!
Yup, totally agree friend:) Let him ruin everything (since he kinda only ruins it for corporate interest and helps with chipping away on the American collective tolerance for these asses)
“Most men would feel insulted, if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages, but many are no more worthily employed now.” - Thoreau
So many creatives have tried to imagine what our inevitable sci fi dystopia would be like but no one could have predicted it's utterly soulsucking banality.
I'm tinkering with a paid search engine. Something to let me find what I want without having to sift through the advertisements and AI generated listicles. What I find interesting, I'm such a hoarder with my free trial searches that I have stopped searching unless it is something I can't find with a wikipedia search or a dictionary or imdb or other databases that are maintained beyond a Google search. I did my first search looking at cupping and does it work... And I actually found many scientific papers, not locked behind some third party service who requires a fee to see it. Without having to search into the second page. We all just use Google mindlessly because we've been doing it so long we forgot you can JUST GO to the website, if you have the address.
I remember yelling at my phone recently I search for something and something completely unrelated popped up I looked at the search bar to see if I type incorrectly I was like why is this here? It is completely off topic
I would strongly disagree. First of all, YT-kun cares about himself being better, not you, and he tries to show to you what make you stay the longest, not even something you enjoy strictly speaking. It _may_ happen so that yt's vector of hooks and sinkholes align with your interests, and your interaction would be mutually beneficial somewhat. But it is way easy to "increase engagement" by making you mad, mad enough to make you show and tell everybody how mad you are. And then help you to calm down watching a b̶u̶n̶c̶h̶ long scroll of t̶i̶k̶-̶t̶o̶k̶s̶ shorts.
One of the truest comments I've read. Dammit RUclips, if I know I would like to see who has reacted to a new music release, can I just get a list of those videos? I literally do not care what else you think might relate to my search. I am trying to spend MORE time on this damn site and you are not making it easy.
1. The people invent something cool 2. The cool thing spreads and gets popular 3. Corporations notice the cool thing and monetize it 4. The cool thing is no longer cool, but is now even more popular 5. Corporations use the once cool thing to sell other once cool things Greed ruins art, Greed ruins politics, Greed ruins people.
Excellent wheel of causality analysis that few are aware of and that is VEEERY difficult to deal with or change. YES!!! Everyone has to be CONSTANTLY AWARE that there’s a constant often sinister!!! battle going on for eyes, ears and stone hearts with blatant triggers and bogus narratives! “Proceed with caution”.
Adam needs to do a show spinoff called "Capitalism Ruins Everything" 🤭😂. Because yeah, the hunt for bigger and bigger corporate profit margin has been a constant factor of decay in basically everything in our lives 😓 (and worldwide, this is not just your problem in America guys - although you ARE exporting it en masse 😇😂)
It’s not greed that is to blame, and let’s not forget all the good that has come about because of greed that we now take for granted-smartphones, Uber/Lyft, GPS, Amazon as the world’s retailer, etc. Your theory has an element of truth to it, but I would modify it to reflect competition: 1) New technology creates new market. Lots of entrants, low barriers to entry, lots of competition 2) As the market matures, some companies emerge that do things better than others. 3) Competition rewards the better ones, while the inferior ones drop out of the market, or are acquired or merged by/into a larger parent company 4) The bigger companies have even greater efficiency advantages due to economies of scale, making it even harder for younger or smaller companies to compete. Less competition, higher barriers to entry, fewer market participants. 5) 2 - 4 repeats exponentially, until you’re left with just a small handful of companies with almost all market share-monopolies or oligopolies. At this point they’re big and powerful enough to just dominate the industry and do anti-consumer things and get away with it, because there’s no real alternative left you can turn to. This is the life cycle of capitalism, imo. Watch any industry and it applies.
I was a relatively early Web adopter, taught myself HTML in '96 and started my niche photo/creative nonfiction website in 1997 and continue adding static HTML pages to it to this day. No ads, no cookies, no tracking, no analytics, no nonsense. As a teenage punk rocker, I self-published zines and comics, and so I always conceived of my website as a book being published one page at a time. Now I've started printing it out--at 3,000 pages, it's going to be a whopper. New media is always incubated by artists and idealists, then it gets commercialized and becomes an industry. But authentic, human stuff will always be there at the fringes. But good luck finding it. Lately I've started uploading my old cable access TV show to youtube. The algorithm is so capricious. One video will get 20 views, the next 600, the next back down to 150. But the numbers are meaningless--what counts are the connections I'm starting to make with individuals who vibe to my work. So despite all the tripe, I retain some hope for the internet as a tool to bring like minds together.
I applaud your hope. I used to fully believe that as well. But over the past 8 years or so, seeing how the internet has basically become weaponized, I have lost it. The odds of being blasted with falsehoods, advertisements, or mindless drivel are infinitely greater than the odds of finding truly interesting, innovative and relevant ideas. But I guess it's also important to differentiate between the real internet vs the handful of big social media platforms that most people spend all their time on. Mad props for sticking to your guns all these years. That's the commitment and passion that the internet used to represent. And I'm thrilled to hear that some dedicated souls such as yourself still carry that flag!
@@rdean150My slender optimism is along the lines of "it could be worse." And it probably will get worse, but at least for now it's still possible to host an independent website at relatively low cost. But AI has already degraded the quality of easily accessible information as SEO optimized dreck populates top search results and organic discovery is unlikely, especially for someone as social media averse as I am. But there's still word of mouth--everything old is new again.
I was skater-metalhead-punk guy in the 90s who made Zines .. you are spot on. I make art based videos and use YT as the storage and delivery mechanism. I make the keyword searches all wrong. Just to fk with the algorithm. U wanna see my stuff? u gotta have it ge uinley shared. Or know me irl. I joke that my views are from FBI becuase I used flagged phrases as keyword descriptions 😂 Now I'm an art teacher. I teach at a nonprofit, and work with at risk youth. I don't have any Social Media..every bit of that cam burn In hell
As someone still on Tumblr it's SO funny to me to hear everyone talk about it like I'm hanging out in a graveyard. Like, sure, it's doomed, but a lot of the reasons we like it are still here.
I love that he mentions the death of tumblr, blaming it all on the accusation of Yahoo as if we don’t all know it died because they banned adult content.
@@frankwolftown repurpose algorithms to not be predatory and based on profit. Utilize algorithms that reward users with self discovery, not with assumptions and suggestions tailored by ad spend. Data shows when users feel they discovered on their own they are more likely to either make a purchase, subscribe, or invest in the content. So basically, keep algorithms, but use them as companions instead of guides. That way we get the essence of the old Internet back with the luxury of some streamlined assistance.
Old mate talks about Tumblr as if it's dead and gone, I went back there after Twitter got renamed. Tumblr is still a lovely place to scroll through and a great break from algorithmic social media.
I hate being manipulated. I quit FB and Insta because the algorithm kept me from seeing and being seen/ I'm almost there with YT. One way I get around the algorithms in YT is to go to my Subscriptions list and go directly to the channel rather than scroll through the 'suggestions'. I can go months without seeing something from a channel I subscribe to even when I've hit notifications, then I go to the channel and find tons of content that I missed out on. I also use ad blocks and send money to content providers during live broadcasts or through memberships. I feel bad about them not getting ad revenue from me, but I hate being manipulated. There have to be more ways to hack the algorithm.
I don't think this is going to get fixed unless people realize that there's not actually infinitely meaningful content. Or even if there is, there isn't infinite 'content' that is meaningful to 'you'. By necessity, the waveform has to collapse, you have to pick one thing over the other thing, you cannot absorb all of the internet. And eventually, when you find yourself scrolling twitter at one in the morning, no longer even able to remember why this made you happy . . . That's not living any longer, that isn't serving your own purpose, that's just addiction.
Guys, that slower, more direct and independent format is still available. But you build it yourselves. You can use public libraries, classes, salons and other informal meeting spaces to interact with your fellow humans on any imaginable subject you like. People have found ways to meet, share information and develop new ideas since the beginning of time. As long as you turn your ideas into ACTIONS, they will survive and some will thrive. There are still millions of people interacting around their hobbies and interests. The best part is when we get to the face to face interaction. That's what I think. That's where it gets real.
Yes, Exactly. This is, by the way, not the internet. Thats just what not being on the internet is like. The "internet" (actually what they're calling the internet is just the web, anything with an http on it is just a small section of the internet called the web) is by design computer systems and not humans sitting on phones trading information by voice. Computers exist to compute and automate. Taking automation out of computers is like taking water out of a pool. If you do that, you can't really call it a pool anymore.
Yet one more tiny pocket of the internet where important cultural works are being rediscovered. What else have they missed? 🪢 (closest thing to a shoelace I could find)
The population at large seems to think that if a thing stops being talked about, it has disappeared. So many things they talk about here as if they are extinct still exist, perfectly content with being their own little world, distant from the modern trends.
lmao as someone that uses tumblr everyday it's really funny how people talk about the site as if it doesn't exist anymore. I mean it has its problems, but it is still there!
Personally I lookup restaurants ahead of time because I have some pretty severe food allergies, and I can't tell you how many times I've gone to restaurants with friends or family only to realize that there's NOTHING on the menu that I can safely eat.
for me the curse of the algorithm is that it doesn't always give everybody the same thing after all. Take FB and celebrities. For whatever reason, every celeb passing, I see them all, 40 posts minimum, shared across Pages (even pages, I don't follow), Groups (even groups i'm not a member of), and of course, my friends. In contrast, my wife, who shares 800 friends in common with me, NEVER gets these. Ever. She's usually shocked to find out about the passing like 3 or 4 days later because in spite of all of that commonality...the algorithm has decided she's not interested in celeb passings. Now that could be because of Meta's accursed hook of "engagement". I put a 'like' enough times on a few, and she didn't. But you get my point - the two of us who share EVERYTHING culturally together and have for 25 years, are not seeing the same 'culture' fed to us online.
There is some real beauty to the algorithm where it has somewhat leveled the playing field for the small players. I just found a band last year just due to RUclips music auto suggestions, and now they are one of my favorites.
You just reminded me of a blog I used to follow over a decade ago, written by an old man and his dog who travelled the canals of the UK on a barge. Every entry was just him stopping at pubs and getting drunk, but it was the most fascinating thing ever.
The most lucrative piece of music Beethoven wrote during his lifetime was an orchestral work called "Wellington's Victory," which is kind of a mashup of "Rule Britannia" and the music for "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow". The music that made you the most money in your lifetime isn't necessarily the music you'll be remembered for
This is the real tragedy of the Commons: we all have a place to go until someone tries to sell stuff there because the people selling stuff have the money, and therefore get to decide the rules.
The moment these sites try to start making money is the moment they all start going down hill. They are choosing to change the site from a social place to a store. Store can be a place to hang out, but at the end of the day, it's about getting you to buy something first.
It's more the moment these sites focus exclusively on making money. Often it's not the original creators that make that pivot, but people who buy the sites (or who "sponsor" them the way Britain "sponsored" Asian countries back in the day). When the site springs up, the site's/company's focus is on building a reputation (aka building a brand), but on the pivot, they're essentially harvesting the reputation in exchange for money.
Unless they're public service non profit organizations, then THEY WERE ALWAYS TRYING TO MAKE MONEY that's what companies do. Just because they weren't as good at making money starting out doesn't mean they weren't always trying. They're thrilled that they're making more money now and their platforms suck for anything else. They're not trying and never were trying to "promote good art" or cultural value or improve people's lives or... whatever you imagined they were doing or bought the marketing that they were good for. They Were Always Trying To Make Money From The Start.
creators need to go back to the days of doing things and sharing it because they want people to see it, not because they want EVERYONE to see it. we need to reject the hustle, collectively.
The parallel to Van Gogh never selling a painting in his lifetime said more than was intended. Yes, he was an indescribably amazing artist, unappreciated in his time and ‘unsuccessful,’ whose impact on art and on the world literally can’t be overstated. He was also so despondent he killed himself.
The guy who made/makes Dinosaur Comics is Ryan North, and he went on to write comics about Squirrel Girl, a character so powerful they wouldn't let her in the MCU because she'd make all other superheroes redundant.
I think social media has gone too far when it comes to advertising. Couple weeks ago I had an experience, all I did was grab a pillow from the couch to sit on the floor for heat. As soon as I went on Facebook, advertisement for floor pillows popped up. Like that’s completely unnecessary. So where does it stop?
I’m a boomer who got a late start with my two kids. They were born in the early 90s, when I was 38 & 41. When I was pregnant with them, I started to get coupons & ads in the mail for diapers , & I didn’t like it. It was a bit disturbing. It’s doesn’t surprise me that this is exponentially more likely with social media. Your discussion of the algorithm, and content that gives you diagnoses like ADHD, it reminds me of something something the Reverend J.R “Bob” Dobbs said in the Book of tge Subgenius. “You’ll pay to know what you really think.”
We can take a certain level of control over it but turning off all suggestions and constantly maintaining your content feed is an exhausting task in its self which takes away the enjoyment.
I think part of the reason for the throwing-darts-at-social-media style of interaction is that there are just so many individual people out there. If you want fame or to be noticed or whatever, you aren't going to do it by merit, because statistically speaking, you're not better than most at something. So you throw darts until something random happens.
The algorithm seems to be a double-edged sword. It can give you things you didn't know you wanted to see or hear then turn around and show you a million things you didn't all by one odd video you clicked on. There's often been times here on RUclips that I was just totally baffled why I was recommended a video. I get more confusion and irritation than genuinely interesting videos.
18:18 "I'm not dead yet!" - current tumblr users But no really tumblr is still the least mentally toxic social media site. Even with the recent CEO meltdown
It is so important to be mindful about what we put into our bodies. When I eat I am not only feeding myself, but nourishing my entire microbiome. Trillions of microscopic organisms that are integral to my survival. They literally keep me healthy, so I reciprocate.
I feel in the rarity in that I bookmark and primarily only look at the stuff that I subscribe to using all platforms like RUclips, Feedly, Netflix, etc. I always do what I want first before it tries to hijack me to tell me what I want.
My main problem with tick tock at least and RUclips.. Is that if I like any political content at all I get completely flooded with it. I had to get rid of tick tock because I was having daily existential Crisis because of all of the negativity that I was seeing...
Yes absolutely. Political content turns into a deluge of darkness. Rage baiting leads to doomscrolling leads to genuine depression. I've lived through it myself and am still struggling to pull myself out of it. If Trump gets elected again, I'm f*cked.
i've been consistently flabergasted recently that other music fans aren't finding their music in the same way i do where i'm hearing something, looking it up, looking up all the band members and their projects, watching interviews, listening to bands they reccomend in those interviews. Or alternatively looking up music in databases by genre that i like and just checking out anything thats gaining even the smallest amount of traction. Or keeping track of a music blog or youtuber for a decade. the only algorithm i have interacted with has been youtube and thats mostly with retro music, but occasionally with indie artists or even pop stuff.
when I saw filterworld on the bookshelf in the last episode, I was hoping that meant you were going to interview him! so excited to watch this, I loved the book
Well, Don't get too excited. This channel is not like Adam ruins everything. This channel is a lot more opinion than it is fact. Still good and informative, but way more opinion.
The internet was out of reach by the average user - a vast majority - in the early days. Today, while people can easily host their own stuff, we cannot overcome the habit of using the monoliths of the internet that users have been trained to accept.
Why? Podcasts are the actual fulfillment of the hope of radio. It allows a lot of small people talk to each other and create something new. Hell, it's enabled NPR to actually fulfill it's ambition of being mostly regional stations broadcasting to each other and creating local programing. Even the smallest regional station can still do a few podcasts.
In the pre-social media world, let's say in the 90's, there was already a criticism of capitalism that it wasn't artists and workers deciding what people watch and listen to, it was execs, it was producers. "Why is the algorithm recommending this to me" was a feeling we already had back then, when radios in summer kind of organically decided that this _one song_ was gonna be the popular track this summer, and they would play every day and then by August we were all fed up with it. The 90's were, in a way, already not a media environment for the people. Is it worse now? I'm not that certain.
I think one of the big drivers for this consolidation was when single sign-on with your social media accounts started to roll out. It created a way to encompass all of this activity under the umbrella and purview of these social media companies.
[edit] I got an actual ADHD diagnosis after watching videos about it for 2 years. But the reason the algorithm showed it to me is because I was searching for tips on how best to teach my ADHD students. [original post] To be fair, those temple run videos do help ADHDers to listen. By giving your eyes something simple but unimportant, it anchors you and helps your ears to take charge and listen. I listened in lectures best when I doodled, and I listened to albums best when I used to play og starcraft against the computer, or playing solitaire. The way I picture it is like thise tesla coils with all those dozens of sparks flying off, unfocused. By giving one point to latch onto, all those dozens of paths of energy focus into one strong beam. It's the fidget toy of the eyes instead of the hands.
I don’t even look at recommended hardly, I just go to YT for my subscriptions and playlists of 1000’s of hours of things I’ve put off watching for the past decade or so.
I’ve spent years explaining why ontology is destiny for intelligence as much as morphology is destiny for life in general. AGI will help us create paradise or allow some of us to radically accelerate the imposition of the hellscape they began creating in the 1980s. For how to get control of this read Amaranthine: How to create a regenerative civilization using artificial intelligence
I miss the old days of the internet. It was nice to stumble upon something small and quirky. It felt like you were adventuring on the open sea of knowledge. Now, it’s all just junk food. So many of today’s generation are technologically illiterate. They have no idea about how computers work, how servers work, how to build websites, or how the internet even functions behind the scenes. These apps have dumbed down these newer generations relationship to technology…
I think outside of the very beginning, this was always true, I'm 31 years old and the only peoplI know who actually know these things are people whose work is related to the Internet.
Your discussion about an algorithm choosing which song is going to be huge and taking that choice out of the artists hands is interesting, but it’s been happening forever, even without algorithms. For example, when the band Devo released their second album “Freedom of Choice“ almost 45 years ago, they thought the big hit single was going to be a song called “Gates of Steal“. But then the album was sent out to some radio stations who started playing it, and the radio audiences very quickly fell in love with “Whip It”. And now that’s almost the only song people think of when you say Devo.
I enjoy your podcast because you don't just have the video, you obviously strive to have well informed and articulate guests. You research your content and work hard and that is why so many of us are here. Lowest common denominator focus in any aspect of "culture" is trashy, banal, boring ,non-creative and generally a waste of time. thank you.
I can't figure out wether I am stale and old or if its the state of social media. I used to be proud of the sites I book marked as I enjoyed searching for content. I find myself spending too much time deleting sites served to me. I beleive this really started when our major ISPs stopped handling email addresses. Like many people I use gmail and always logged into it.
You had me until the jokes about ADHD and social media. There was a time that nobody was left-handed. That time coincidently lined up with the church calling left-handed people evil. As people gained more knowledge they felt safe exposing the fact that they were left-handed. The same goes for things like ADHD and autism. I am in my 40s and I just learned what it means to be autistic in the past 3 years, and thanks to that I can now start to make sense of my entire life and why it never felt right. TikTok didn't make me autistic, but the autistic creators helped me to see myself for the first time. This is just an anecdote, but there are thousands more out there. It's tough enough for us, please don't make us question whether we really are who we are or not.
We should ALWAYS question if we are who we are, it's called life. As if who we are is some kind of static state of being... The important thing is to be mindful and never take yourself too seriously.
Thanks for the heads-up; I stopped watching because I get enough of that dumb invalidating 'skepticism' in my real life already. Disappointed to hear that Adam would participate in something that silly and close-minded. The comparison with left-handedness is spot on. More people turn out to be neurodivergent because of growing awareness of what it is. And we're sick of being told that all our very typical symptoms and struggles are actually just 'bad personal choices' that we could magically solve 'if only we really wanted to' (I'm not assuming that that is what Adam said or even believes, but it's invariably what the 'skepticism' towards the increasingly evident prevalence of neurodivergency leads to; hence why it's so personally bothersome to me and why I'd rather stop watching than hear that nonsense for the umpteenth time)
Thats great that you found that out about yourself! I hope after finding this information out you have followed up with professionals who can accurately let you know if that’s what you have going on. Awareness about these things are great, but having millions of people thinking they have some illness from a TikTok influencer instead of a medical professional is a serious problem.
@@joeyh31 Cut the sarcasm and concern-trolling. Did you really miss the part where not everyone has access to such medical professionals? It's wild that you managed to read his comment yet somehow missed the entire point. Have you already gone to a professional to seek confirmation for the intellectual disability you appear to suffer from? No right to benefits otherwise! ;)
RUclips has a chrono subscription page. I never even look at the home page. I only use the rec on the side to test out new channels. I haven't mindlessly watched random youtube videos since that lady fell outta the grape stomping bucket.
*I'm favoured, $42,000 every month! I can now give back to the locals in my community and also support God's works and the church. God bless America. Psalm 144_1-2 says... "Blessed be the Lord my rock who trains my hands for battle, and my fingers for war,! Amen. He is more than enough!!! And i keep praying in the spirit with unknown tongues of fire*
YES!!! That's exactly her name (Lucia Celina) so many people have recommended highly about her and am just starting with her 😊 from Brisbane Australia 🇦🇺
This reminds me of a job "interview" I did at Amazon. The person I met with explained to me how the driving algorithm would decide if I was driving well enough and then told me to fill out my paperwork. The hiring algorithm had already decided I was good enough. I did not take that job.
Oh, this did not make my disabled artist/poet self feel like i've got a pathway forward to make a living at the art. Which, really, is not vastly different than yesterday.
Many artists are struggling with this today but there are ways, my advice would be seeking art groups and societies in your local area and building a support network with other artists. Goodluck ❤
There are salient problems with algorithm based content discovery, but the answer isn’t old-world top down media gatekeepers. There’s a reason people were chomping at the bit to abandon that model.
And the failure of the streaming wars is reflective of the waning relevance of the media conglomerate. The problem isn’t the algorithms as a paradigm, it’s misaligned incentives.
Not to mention the "filter" they used to delete any posts the filter flagged as porn, which targeted almost any photo or artwork with too many flesh tones.
Great video. The guests keep getting better and better with each video. I was saddened when Adam Ruins Everything was cancelled and very pleased to rediscover your podcast via RUclips algorithms. Keep up the great work. Maybe another cable network one day will be wise enough to give you another show. 🤞 I don’t stream, but might have to now that I’m aware of your new show.
I never had heard about pitch fork, but I really enjoy hearing the backstory of how a song/album came about. I’ll have to check that site out. Thanks for mentioning it .
Once again, the problem isn't the technology, but how it is used. If the "algorithms" were open sourced so that everyone had a say on what "important" is, it would be nothing to worry about.
This is why I'm so excited for Bluesky. No algorithm, 100% self-curation, and I really hope it stays that way. It probably won't, if history has shown us anything, but I would love to be surprised and it stay algorithm free.
At this point we should call "content" what it is - brain candy. You aren't creating things "for the algorithm." _YOU_ are the product. Anything you make is merely a byproduct of the commodification of your attention.
the story at 53:13 where Adam talks abt netflix reminds me of this time a dude cancelled a date with me at the last minute because the okcupid algorithm said we weren't a good match lmao. even tho we met on a completely different app (i think it was bumble) he found my okc profile that i hadn't updated in years. i messaged him to ask if we were still going to the movies that night and he confronted me with our okc match score. his exact words were something like 'you're super cute, but according to the algorithm we wouldn't be compatible, so lets just cancel this" 💀
3:50 - we should really be saying systems when we are talking about "the algorithm", most of the time, that does much more justice to the amount of variables and interactions taking place, these systems are looping in multiple data sources and processing them with multiple algorithms in sometimes non-linear ways. We talk about systems in games, like a combat system, and thats much more analogous to what these "algorithms" are than a long string of mathematical symbols.
I just thought of another hack for YT. I use the 'Not interested' and 'Don't recommend this channel' options...A LOT. This tends to train the algorithm and keeps the real trashy stuff out of my suggestions feed. I also go to the Subscriptions option and it only recommends content from my subscriptions - it still only recommends about 10 of my 50+ Subscriptions, but at least it's not messing with me.
I t doesn't work for everyone, doesn't work for me at all, I click on "not interested" or "don't recommend channel" and youtube shows me the video more and more content of the same channel or topic. I'm trying to escape drama channels about illuminaughti for over 6 months now, I never saw a single one, always click the not interest and youtube still thinks I want to see this, same things with pimple popping and anorexia content.
Honestly i prefer the algorithm. You can sort youtube by subscriptions. It's inferior. I definitely prefer it to some rich media mogul who is choosing their friends to get a new show on nbc. Its so weird to say the algorithm is more homogeneous when its customized to each individual.
If you only focus on the problems without sharing or exploring solutions to those problems and presenting people and organizations who are working on solving them you are just feeding learned hopelessness and despair and make a profit off of it. Adam I suggest you look at something called solutions journalism they have a lot of resources to help you.
Bottom line, the important things are still dictated by executives on most platforms. They decide when to make sure specific movies end up on Netflix/Disney/HBO/etc landing page or should get preferential treatment in the algorithm. If you want to be seen, be important enough to matter to be sorted by people and not the algo. Only RUclips and TikTok are completely devoid of humans making any decisions about content on the landing page.
I'm a machine learning expert, and -- like it or not, and many days I don't -- machine learning and AI are the way of the future. Computers aren't sentient* (*yet, as far as we can tell -- it's complicated); they're not going to "take over the world" anytime soon. But their human overlords certainly ARE sentient. What alarms me is that even experts like me don't fully understand how machine learning works. I'm not talking about "prompt hacking," which is cargo cult at best, I'm talking about the deep math and science behind e.g. ANN's, deep learning, etc. -- the minimum barrier to entry is an understanding of linear algebra, calculus, and statistics. Needless to say, in a world where many people struggle to calculate a tip, this is not common. What this means is that even with the best intentions -- and make no mistake, Google, Amazon, Twitter et al do NOT have the "best of intentions" -- we can't really predict how these things will work. And yet, machine learning algorithms ("models" is more appropriate than "algorithms" in this context, btw) are literally running our lives. This worries me. Good segment.
I am not at all anti-AI; I'm a techno-optimist, and I welcome the machine overlords! But, ML *must not be allowed* to be the arbiter and gatekeeper of human culture, or it will kill human culture... which it is, as your video shows, already doing.
I'll just have you know that I listen to your podcast on Spotify even though I'm subscribed on RUclips. That could possibly be the case for other people as well and why it looks like subscribers aren't watching.
Tumblr died because it made its mark by allowing adult content, but then once it had those numbers behind it, sterilized the platform. Humanity was mad.
40:30 - I'm a subscriber, but I reached this video through the right hand 'suggested' list. News to me, but also indicative of reliance on the algorithm to give me videos I want to watch.
He would have more than enough to work with, now. When I think of him, and other truth-tellers we’ve lost, like Molly Ivins, Barbara Ehrenreich, & Edward Said, I wonder if it’s maybe better that they don’t see what’s happening, now.
@@bethmoore7722 I keep thinking back to 2010. Nicholas Carr (though not in the same league as those you mentioned) wrote What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, in 2010. This has been a pretty crappy millennium.
if you think the algorithm warped our culture and our brains via social media, imagine how bad it’ll be when we introduce AI into it. Algorithms are just primitive versions of an AI. 😅
It will probably destroy us all, not because it will create consciousness but because we can't handle it, it will be a crazy world of not knowing what is true anymore and a machine doing whatever you do better and faster than you to the point of obsolescence.
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The algorithm is like your grandma that one time you said you liked the pie she baked and next time you come over there’s 20 pies of different flavors, no food, and you really didn’t even want dessert
Mmmmmm I luv pie
That happened to you?
And it's a common occurrence?
😂
Exactly. The programmers can’t fathom that people might actually be complex beings, capable of interest in wildly different, seemingly unrelated things, or that if we’ve already experienced one of (a), then we’ve had our fill of it, and that’s the one thing for sure you know we don’t want more of.
I was so excited to see Adam here. We loved Adam Ruins Everything, and he’s still on the job. I learn something new, every time I’d see him. I’m 70 years old, & my curiosity is as strong as it was when I was 10. Learning new things every day brings me joy, so thank you, Adam!
Agreed. He is refreshing and I enjoy learning new things/different ways of thinking.
This right here, is what it’s about ✨👏
Yup, totally agree friend:)
Let him ruin everything (since he kinda only ruins it for corporate interest and helps with chipping away on the American collective tolerance for these asses)
i hope this is how i am when i'm 70
I'm just over half your age, and I hope when I'm in my 70's I can keep my curiosity and wit like you have 😅
“Most men would feel insulted, if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages, but many are no more worthily employed now.” - Thoreau
Perfect.
So many creatives have tried to imagine what our inevitable sci fi dystopia would be like but no one could have predicted it's utterly soulsucking banality.
Soulsucking banality! Great description.
Have you ever watched Lost in Translation? I think it captures that kind of emptiness pretty well, though in a fairly different context
No one?
Or no one the algorithm showed you?
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
@@T61APL89I was hoping someone mentioned it.
Anyone who has tried to use RUclipss search function knows these algorithms don't care at all about showing us what "we are interested in"
Not at all, mine is trying to show what other people in my country likes, not me.
I'm tinkering with a paid search engine. Something to let me find what I want without having to sift through the advertisements and AI generated listicles. What I find interesting, I'm such a hoarder with my free trial searches that I have stopped searching unless it is something I can't find with a wikipedia search or a dictionary or imdb or other databases that are maintained beyond a Google search.
I did my first search looking at cupping and does it work... And I actually found many scientific papers, not locked behind some third party service who requires a fee to see it. Without having to search into the second page.
We all just use Google mindlessly because we've been doing it so long we forgot you can JUST GO to the website, if you have the address.
I remember yelling at my phone recently I search for something and something completely unrelated popped up I looked at the search bar to see if I type incorrectly I was like why is this here? It is completely off topic
I would strongly disagree. First of all, YT-kun cares about himself being better, not you, and he tries to show to you what make you stay the longest, not even something you enjoy strictly speaking. It _may_ happen so that yt's vector of hooks and sinkholes align with your interests, and your interaction would be mutually beneficial somewhat. But it is way easy to "increase engagement" by making you mad, mad enough to make you show and tell everybody how mad you are. And then help you to calm down watching a b̶u̶n̶c̶h̶ long scroll of t̶i̶k̶-̶t̶o̶k̶s̶ shorts.
One of the truest comments I've read.
Dammit RUclips, if I know I would like to see who has reacted to a new music release, can I just get a list of those videos? I literally do not care what else you think might relate to my search. I am trying to spend MORE time on this damn site and you are not making it easy.
1. The people invent something cool 2. The cool thing spreads and gets popular 3. Corporations notice the cool thing and monetize it 4. The cool thing is no longer cool, but is now even more popular 5. Corporations use the once cool thing to sell other once cool things Greed ruins art, Greed ruins politics, Greed ruins people.
Excellent wheel of causality analysis that few are aware of and that is VEEERY difficult to deal with or change. YES!!! Everyone has to be CONSTANTLY AWARE that there’s a constant often sinister!!! battle going on for eyes, ears and stone hearts with blatant triggers and bogus narratives! “Proceed with caution”.
it's the exact same process as urban gentrification. :(
Adam needs to do a show spinoff called "Capitalism Ruins Everything" 🤭😂. Because yeah, the hunt for bigger and bigger corporate profit margin has been a constant factor of decay in basically everything in our lives 😓 (and worldwide, this is not just your problem in America guys - although you ARE exporting it en masse 😇😂)
And greed is really all that 99% of humanity cares about. So artists starve and the billionaire tumors get even bigger.
It’s not greed that is to blame, and let’s not forget all the good that has come about because of greed that we now take for granted-smartphones, Uber/Lyft, GPS, Amazon as the world’s retailer, etc. Your theory has an element of truth to it, but I would modify it to reflect competition:
1) New technology creates new market. Lots of entrants, low barriers to entry, lots of competition
2) As the market matures, some companies emerge that do things better than others.
3) Competition rewards the better ones, while the inferior ones drop out of the market, or are acquired or merged by/into a larger parent company
4) The bigger companies have even greater efficiency advantages due to economies of scale, making it even harder for younger or smaller companies to compete. Less competition, higher barriers to entry, fewer market participants.
5) 2 - 4 repeats exponentially, until you’re left with just a small handful of companies with almost all market share-monopolies or oligopolies. At this point they’re big and powerful enough to just dominate the industry and do anti-consumer things and get away with it, because there’s no real alternative left you can turn to.
This is the life cycle of capitalism, imo. Watch any industry and it applies.
I was a relatively early Web adopter, taught myself HTML in '96 and started my niche photo/creative nonfiction website in 1997 and continue adding static HTML pages to it to this day. No ads, no cookies, no tracking, no analytics, no nonsense. As a teenage punk rocker, I self-published zines and comics, and so I always conceived of my website as a book being published one page at a time. Now I've started printing it out--at 3,000 pages, it's going to be a whopper. New media is always incubated by artists and idealists, then it gets commercialized and becomes an industry. But authentic, human stuff will always be there at the fringes. But good luck finding it. Lately I've started uploading my old cable access TV show to youtube. The algorithm is so capricious. One video will get 20 views, the next 600, the next back down to 150. But the numbers are meaningless--what counts are the connections I'm starting to make with individuals who vibe to my work. So despite all the tripe, I retain some hope for the internet as a tool to bring like minds together.
I applaud your hope. I used to fully believe that as well. But over the past 8 years or so, seeing how the internet has basically become weaponized, I have lost it. The odds of being blasted with falsehoods, advertisements, or mindless drivel are infinitely greater than the odds of finding truly interesting, innovative and relevant ideas. But I guess it's also important to differentiate between the real internet vs the handful of big social media platforms that most people spend all their time on.
Mad props for sticking to your guns all these years. That's the commitment and passion that the internet used to represent. And I'm thrilled to hear that some dedicated souls such as yourself still carry that flag!
@@rdean150My slender optimism is along the lines of "it could be worse." And it probably will get worse, but at least for now it's still possible to host an independent website at relatively low cost. But AI has already degraded the quality of easily accessible information as SEO optimized dreck populates top search results and organic discovery is unlikely, especially for someone as social media averse as I am. But there's still word of mouth--everything old is new again.
I was skater-metalhead-punk guy in the 90s who made Zines .. you are spot on. I make art based videos and use YT as the storage and delivery mechanism. I make the keyword searches all wrong. Just to fk with the algorithm.
U wanna see my stuff? u gotta have it ge uinley shared. Or know me irl.
I joke that my views are from FBI becuase I used flagged phrases as keyword descriptions 😂
Now I'm an art teacher. I teach at a nonprofit, and work with at risk youth.
I don't have any Social Media..every bit of that cam burn In hell
And that is exactly how the whole Internet should have stayed with few exceptions and not this nonsense parody of a WWW today.
As someone still on Tumblr it's SO funny to me to hear everyone talk about it like I'm hanging out in a graveyard. Like, sure, it's doomed, but a lot of the reasons we like it are still here.
Tumblr- "Quit telling everyone I'm dead!"
I love that he mentions the death of tumblr, blaming it all on the accusation of Yahoo as if we don’t all know it died because they banned adult content.
I mean that was probably due to pressure from yahoo wanting to attract more advertisers
It's not even dead, just diminished from its peak.
My theses for my PhD in computer science was actually about re-humanizing the internet.
ChatGPT probably wrote most of it.
@@Auguur except ChatGPT didn't exist in 2014
@@AuguurNOt everyone is lazy and some people actually are interested in their field of study so they put time and effort on it.
What is your solution to rehumanizing the internet?
@@frankwolftown repurpose algorithms to not be predatory and based on profit. Utilize algorithms that reward users with self discovery, not with assumptions and suggestions tailored by ad spend. Data shows when users feel they discovered on their own they are more likely to either make a purchase, subscribe, or invest in the content. So basically, keep algorithms, but use them as companions instead of guides. That way we get the essence of the old Internet back with the luxury of some streamlined assistance.
Old mate talks about Tumblr as if it's dead and gone, I went back there after Twitter got renamed. Tumblr is still a lovely place to scroll through and a great break from algorithmic social media.
I hate being manipulated. I quit FB and Insta because the algorithm kept me from seeing and being seen/ I'm almost there with YT. One way I get around the algorithms in YT is to go to my Subscriptions list and go directly to the channel rather than scroll through the 'suggestions'. I can go months without seeing something from a channel I subscribe to even when I've hit notifications, then I go to the channel and find tons of content that I missed out on. I also use ad blocks and send money to content providers during live broadcasts or through memberships. I feel bad about them not getting ad revenue from me, but I hate being manipulated. There have to be more ways to hack the algorithm.
if i watch a local fox station to see any reporting on local events, i immediately start getting religious content and fox news, its gross
I don't think this is going to get fixed unless people realize that there's not actually infinitely meaningful content. Or even if there is, there isn't infinite 'content' that is meaningful to 'you'. By necessity, the waveform has to collapse, you have to pick one thing over the other thing, you cannot absorb all of the internet.
And eventually, when you find yourself scrolling twitter at one in the morning, no longer even able to remember why this made you happy . . . That's not living any longer, that isn't serving your own purpose, that's just addiction.
Guys, that slower, more direct and independent format is still available. But you build it yourselves. You can use public libraries, classes, salons and other informal meeting spaces to interact with your fellow humans on any imaginable subject you like. People have found ways to meet, share information and develop new ideas since the beginning of time. As long as you turn your ideas into ACTIONS, they will survive and some will thrive. There are still millions of people interacting around their hobbies and interests. The best part is when we get to the face to face interaction. That's what I think. That's where it gets real.
An example: in person speed dating is back because algorithmic dating apps are so horrible
Yes, Exactly.
This is, by the way, not the internet.
Thats just what not being on the internet is like.
The "internet" (actually what they're calling the internet is just the web, anything with an http on it is just a small section of the internet called the web) is by design computer systems and not humans sitting on phones trading information by voice.
Computers exist to compute and automate. Taking automation out of computers is like taking water out of a pool.
If you do that, you can't really call it a pool anymore.
Fascinating how many people think tumblr has disappeared completely. It's like they didn't even watch Goncharov.
Yet one more tiny pocket of the internet where important cultural works are being rediscovered. What else have they missed?
🪢 (closest thing to a shoelace I could find)
The population at large seems to think that if a thing stops being talked about, it has disappeared. So many things they talk about here as if they are extinct still exist, perfectly content with being their own little world, distant from the modern trends.
lmao as someone that uses tumblr everyday it's really funny how people talk about the site as if it doesn't exist anymore. I mean it has its problems, but it is still there!
Personally I lookup restaurants ahead of time because I have some pretty severe food allergies, and I can't tell you how many times I've gone to restaurants with friends or family only to realize that there's NOTHING on the menu that I can safely eat.
for me the curse of the algorithm is that it doesn't always give everybody the same thing after all. Take FB and celebrities. For whatever reason, every celeb passing, I see them all, 40 posts minimum, shared across Pages (even pages, I don't follow), Groups (even groups i'm not a member of), and of course, my friends.
In contrast, my wife, who shares 800 friends in common with me, NEVER gets these. Ever. She's usually shocked to find out about the passing like 3 or 4 days later because in spite of all of that commonality...the algorithm has decided she's not interested in celeb passings.
Now that could be because of Meta's accursed hook of "engagement". I put a 'like' enough times on a few, and she didn't. But you get my point - the two of us who share EVERYTHING culturally together and have for 25 years, are not seeing the same 'culture' fed to us online.
There is some real beauty to the algorithm where it has somewhat leveled the playing field for the small players. I just found a band last year just due to RUclips music auto suggestions, and now they are one of my favorites.
You just reminded me of a blog I used to follow over a decade ago, written by an old man and his dog who travelled the canals of the UK on a barge. Every entry was just him stopping at pubs and getting drunk, but it was the most fascinating thing ever.
YOU REMIND ME OF A BLANK BOT ACCOUNT BECAUSE YOU ARE A BLANK BOT ACCOUNT
NICE TRY VLAD
The most lucrative piece of music Beethoven wrote during his lifetime was an orchestral work called "Wellington's Victory," which is kind of a mashup of "Rule Britannia" and the music for "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow".
The music that made you the most money in your lifetime isn't necessarily the music you'll be remembered for
This is the real tragedy of the Commons: we all have a place to go until someone tries to sell stuff there because the people selling stuff have the money, and therefore get to decide the rules.
The moment these sites try to start making money is the moment they all start going down hill. They are choosing to change the site from a social place to a store. Store can be a place to hang out, but at the end of the day, it's about getting you to buy something first.
It's more the moment these sites focus exclusively on making money. Often it's not the original creators that make that pivot, but people who buy the sites (or who "sponsor" them the way Britain "sponsored" Asian countries back in the day). When the site springs up, the site's/company's focus is on building a reputation (aka building a brand), but on the pivot, they're essentially harvesting the reputation in exchange for money.
Unless they're public service non profit organizations, then
THEY WERE ALWAYS TRYING TO MAKE MONEY that's what companies do.
Just because they weren't as good at making money starting out doesn't mean they weren't always trying. They're thrilled that they're making more money now and their platforms suck for anything else.
They're not trying and never were trying to "promote good art" or cultural value or improve people's lives or... whatever you imagined they were doing or bought the marketing that they were good for.
They Were Always Trying To Make Money From The Start.
Adam: Have you ever been on TikTok and---
Me: No
Lol tik tock is one app I won’t be downloading. I’m glad others enjoy it, but I spend too much time online as it is lol.
based
same lol
The internet is now about selling yourself to survive for another day
creators need to go back to the days of doing things and sharing it because they want people to see it, not because they want EVERYONE to see it. we need to reject the hustle, collectively.
Easy to say if you aren't trying to make a living off your work. It's hard to blame the creators who didn't create the current market for their work.
The parallel to Van Gogh never selling a painting in his lifetime said more than was intended.
Yes, he was an indescribably amazing artist, unappreciated in his time and ‘unsuccessful,’ whose impact on art and on the world literally can’t be overstated.
He was also so despondent he killed himself.
@@kyleolson9636 Can't have it both ways.
The guy who made/makes Dinosaur Comics is Ryan North, and he went on to write comics about Squirrel Girl, a character so powerful they wouldn't let her in the MCU because she'd make all other superheroes redundant.
Thank you for helping me feel a little bit more sane, yet again, Adam.
I think social media has gone too far when it comes to advertising. Couple weeks ago I had an experience, all I did was grab a pillow from the couch to sit on the floor for heat. As soon as I went on Facebook, advertisement for floor pillows popped up. Like that’s completely unnecessary. So where does it stop?
I’m a boomer who got a late start with my two kids. They were born in the early 90s, when I was 38 & 41. When I was pregnant with them, I started to get coupons & ads in the mail for diapers , & I didn’t like it. It was a bit disturbing.
It’s doesn’t surprise me that this is exponentially more likely with social media.
Your discussion of the algorithm, and content that gives you diagnoses like ADHD, it reminds me of something something the Reverend J.R “Bob” Dobbs said in the Book of tge Subgenius. “You’ll pay to know what you really think.”
And what’s most scary is how your phone knew you just grabbed a throw pillow. They are watching.
We can take a certain level of control over it but turning off all suggestions and constantly maintaining your content feed is an exhausting task in its self which takes away the enjoyment.
so interesting what adam said.. "we are doing content for the algorithm, not for the people"
The algorythm is made to make profit for its owner, no to make you happy.
I think part of the reason for the throwing-darts-at-social-media style of interaction is that there are just so many individual people out there. If you want fame or to be noticed or whatever, you aren't going to do it by merit, because statistically speaking, you're not better than most at something. So you throw darts until something random happens.
I’m not able to thank you so thank you! I’m so enjoying your shows more & more!!❤ Glad you are here✌️
The algorithm seems to be a double-edged sword. It can give you things you didn't know you wanted to see or hear then turn around and show you a million things you didn't all by one odd video you clicked on. There's often been times here on RUclips that I was just totally baffled why I was recommended a video. I get more confusion and irritation than genuinely interesting videos.
“Living his best life in Fresno” said no one, ever-except for that one time Adam Conover said it on his podcast.
18:18 "I'm not dead yet!" - current tumblr users
But no really tumblr is still the least mentally toxic social media site. Even with the recent CEO meltdown
It is so important to be mindful about what we put into our bodies. When I eat I am not only feeding myself, but nourishing my entire microbiome. Trillions of microscopic organisms that are integral to my survival. They literally keep me healthy, so I reciprocate.
I feel in the rarity in that I bookmark and primarily only look at the stuff that I subscribe to using all platforms like RUclips, Feedly, Netflix, etc. I always do what I want first before it tries to hijack me to tell me what I want.
Just wanted to say Adam is the man! These episodes are so great!
My main problem with tick tock at least and RUclips..
Is that if I like any political content at all I get completely flooded with it. I had to get rid of tick tock because I was having daily existential Crisis because of all of the negativity that I was seeing...
Yes absolutely. Political content turns into a deluge of darkness. Rage baiting leads to doomscrolling leads to genuine depression. I've lived through it myself and am still struggling to pull myself out of it. If Trump gets elected again, I'm f*cked.
i've been consistently flabergasted recently that other music fans aren't finding their music in the same way i do where i'm hearing something, looking it up, looking up all the band members and their projects, watching interviews, listening to bands they reccomend in those interviews. Or alternatively looking up music in databases by genre that i like and just checking out anything thats gaining even the smallest amount of traction. Or keeping track of a music blog or youtuber for a decade. the only algorithm i have interacted with has been youtube and thats mostly with retro music, but occasionally with indie artists or even pop stuff.
Just want to say my algorithm brought me here.
when I saw filterworld on the bookshelf in the last episode, I was hoping that meant you were going to interview him! so excited to watch this, I loved the book
Well, Don't get too excited. This channel is not like Adam ruins everything. This channel is a lot more opinion than it is fact. Still good and informative, but way more opinion.
comment for this terrible, terrible algo , to boost this information , to help people escape the algo.
If you say "The Algorithm" in front of a mirror 3 times, it appears behind you, hacks your YT channel and immediately starts posting crypto videos.
The internet was out of reach by the average user - a vast majority - in the early days. Today, while people can easily host their own stuff, we cannot overcome the habit of using the monoliths of the internet that users have been trained to accept.
I do appreciate the irony of people talking about content becoming more ambient on a podcast, the most background-by-design medium.
Why? Podcasts are the actual fulfillment of the hope of radio. It allows a lot of small people talk to each other and create something new. Hell, it's enabled NPR to actually fulfill it's ambition of being mostly regional stations broadcasting to each other and creating local programing. Even the smallest regional station can still do a few podcasts.
Most background by design medium?
In the pre-social media world, let's say in the 90's, there was already a criticism of capitalism that it wasn't artists and workers deciding what people watch and listen to, it was execs, it was producers. "Why is the algorithm recommending this to me" was a feeling we already had back then, when radios in summer kind of organically decided that this _one song_ was gonna be the popular track this summer, and they would play every day and then by August we were all fed up with it. The 90's were, in a way, already not a media environment for the people. Is it worse now? I'm not that certain.
R.I.P. for preyahoo/big red Tumblr and one of the best sharing platform of content we ever had for all content ratings.
I think one of the big drivers for this consolidation was when single sign-on with your social media accounts started to roll out. It created a way to encompass all of this activity under the umbrella and purview of these social media companies.
[edit] I got an actual ADHD diagnosis after watching videos about it for 2 years. But the reason the algorithm showed it to me is because I was searching for tips on how best to teach my ADHD students.
[original post] To be fair, those temple run videos do help ADHDers to listen. By giving your eyes something simple but unimportant, it anchors you and helps your ears to take charge and listen. I listened in lectures best when I doodled, and I listened to albums best when I used to play og starcraft against the computer, or playing solitaire. The way I picture it is like thise tesla coils with all those dozens of sparks flying off, unfocused. By giving one point to latch onto, all those dozens of paths of energy focus into one strong beam. It's the fidget toy of the eyes instead of the hands.
I'm so concerned at how much the algorithm pushes prejudice and hate
I don’t even look at recommended hardly, I just go to YT for my subscriptions and playlists of 1000’s of hours of things I’ve put off watching for the past decade or so.
I’ve spent years explaining why ontology is destiny for intelligence as much as morphology is destiny for life in general. AGI will help us create paradise or allow some of us to radically accelerate the imposition of the hellscape they began creating in the 1980s. For how to get control of this read Amaranthine: How to create a regenerative civilization using artificial intelligence
I miss the old days of the internet. It was nice to stumble upon something small and quirky. It felt like you were adventuring on the open sea of knowledge. Now, it’s all just junk food. So many of today’s generation are technologically illiterate. They have no idea about how computers work, how servers work, how to build websites, or how the internet even functions behind the scenes. These apps have dumbed down these newer generations relationship to technology…
I think outside of the very beginning, this was always true, I'm 31 years old and the only peoplI know who actually know these things are people whose work is related to the Internet.
Your discussion about an algorithm choosing which song is going to be huge and taking that choice out of the artists hands is interesting, but it’s been happening forever, even without algorithms.
For example, when the band Devo released their second album “Freedom of Choice“ almost 45 years ago, they thought the big hit single was going to be a song called “Gates of Steal“. But then the album was sent out to some radio stations who started playing it, and the radio audiences very quickly fell in love with “Whip It”. And now that’s almost the only song people think of when you say Devo.
18:08 me, still using tumblr daily: you can come back anytime bro. it's more lively than you might think.
I enjoy your podcast because you don't just have the video, you obviously strive to have well informed and articulate guests. You research your content and work hard and that is why so many of us are here. Lowest common denominator focus in any aspect of "culture" is trashy, banal, boring ,non-creative and generally a waste of time. thank you.
May the algorithm notice this video. Amen 🙏
I can't figure out wether I am stale and old or if its the state of social media. I used to be proud of the sites I book marked as I enjoyed searching for content. I find myself spending too much time deleting sites served to me.
I beleive this really started when our major ISPs stopped handling email addresses. Like many people I use gmail and always logged into it.
You had me until the jokes about ADHD and social media. There was a time that nobody was left-handed. That time coincidently lined up with the church calling left-handed people evil. As people gained more knowledge they felt safe exposing the fact that they were left-handed.
The same goes for things like ADHD and autism. I am in my 40s and I just learned what it means to be autistic in the past 3 years, and thanks to that I can now start to make sense of my entire life and why it never felt right. TikTok didn't make me autistic, but the autistic creators helped me to see myself for the first time.
This is just an anecdote, but there are thousands more out there. It's tough enough for us, please don't make us question whether we really are who we are or not.
We should ALWAYS question if we are who we are, it's called life. As if who we are is some kind of static state of being... The important thing is to be mindful and never take yourself too seriously.
Thanks for the heads-up; I stopped watching because I get enough of that dumb invalidating 'skepticism' in my real life already. Disappointed to hear that Adam would participate in something that silly and close-minded.
The comparison with left-handedness is spot on. More people turn out to be neurodivergent because of growing awareness of what it is. And we're sick of being told that all our very typical symptoms and struggles are actually just 'bad personal choices' that we could magically solve 'if only we really wanted to' (I'm not assuming that that is what Adam said or even believes, but it's invariably what the 'skepticism' towards the increasingly evident prevalence of neurodivergency leads to; hence why it's so personally bothersome to me and why I'd rather stop watching than hear that nonsense for the umpteenth time)
Thats great that you found that out about yourself! I hope after finding this information out you have followed up with professionals who can accurately let you know if that’s what you have going on. Awareness about these things are great, but having millions of people thinking they have some illness from a TikTok influencer instead of a medical professional is a serious problem.
@@joeyh31 Cut the sarcasm and concern-trolling. Did you really miss the part where not everyone has access to such medical professionals? It's wild that you managed to read his comment yet somehow missed the entire point. Have you already gone to a professional to seek confirmation for the intellectual disability you appear to suffer from? No right to benefits otherwise! ;)
RUclips has a chrono subscription page. I never even look at the home page. I only use the rec on the side to test out new channels. I haven't mindlessly watched random youtube videos since that lady fell outta the grape stomping bucket.
*I'm favoured, $42,000 every month! I can now give back to the locals in my community and also support God's works and the church. God bless America. Psalm 144_1-2 says... "Blessed be the Lord my rock who trains my hands for battle, and my fingers for war,! Amen. He is more than enough!!! And i keep praying in the spirit with unknown tongues of fire*
God bless you more abundantly for your generosity
I'm genuinely curious to know how you earn that much monthly
Thanks to Lucia Celina.
YES!!! That's exactly her name (Lucia Celina) so many people have recommended highly about her and am just starting with her 😊 from Brisbane Australia 🇦🇺
I have heard a lot of wonderful things about Lucia Celina on the news but didn't believe it until now. I'm definitely trying her out
This reminds me of a job "interview" I did at Amazon. The person I met with explained to me how the driving algorithm would decide if I was driving well enough and then told me to fill out my paperwork. The hiring algorithm had already decided I was good enough. I did not take that job.
Oh, this did not make my disabled artist/poet self feel like i've got a pathway forward to make a living at the art. Which, really, is not vastly different than yesterday.
Many artists are struggling with this today but there are ways, my advice would be seeking art groups and societies in your local area and building a support network with other artists. Goodluck ❤
Yeah things are looking exceptionally bleak for us. The only way I can reach new audience now is through word of mouth.
There are salient problems with algorithm based content discovery, but the answer isn’t old-world top down media gatekeepers. There’s a reason people were chomping at the bit to abandon that model.
And the failure of the streaming wars is reflective of the waning relevance of the media conglomerate. The problem isn’t the algorithms as a paradigm, it’s misaligned incentives.
YES
Tumblr also banned porn after being acquired by Yahoo! That had a bigger impact than people realize.
Not to mention the "filter" they used to delete any posts the filter flagged as porn, which targeted almost any photo or artwork with too many flesh tones.
If the platforms didn't pay for content, maybe we'd have more equity from the algorithms
The algorithm sent me here tbh
Me too! Happy to be here though!
Great video. The guests keep getting better and better with each video.
I was saddened when Adam Ruins Everything was cancelled and very pleased to rediscover your podcast via RUclips algorithms.
Keep up the great work. Maybe another cable network one day will be wise enough to give you another show. 🤞
I don’t stream, but might have to now that I’m aware of your new show.
I never had heard about pitch fork, but I really enjoy hearing the backstory of how a song/album came about. I’ll have to check that site out. Thanks for mentioning it .
This isn't what I was expecting. "The Algorithm" is a Frence dude called Rémi Gallego that does electronic music prog metal fusion. He's great.
Sometimes this feels like the most important show left. Fascinating and scary and yet fun.
The algorithm "understands you" in the same way a horoscope does - you're seeing what you want to see in what is just a very broad, generic template.
Once again, the problem isn't the technology, but how it is used. If the "algorithms" were open sourced so that everyone had a say on what "important" is, it would be nothing to worry about.
This is why I'm so excited for Bluesky. No algorithm, 100% self-curation, and I really hope it stays that way. It probably won't, if history has shown us anything, but I would love to be surprised and it stay algorithm free.
It will be algorithm free, because it will never be enough of a market for anyone to bother.
At this point we should call "content" what it is - brain candy. You aren't creating things "for the algorithm." _YOU_ are the product. Anything you make is merely a byproduct of the commodification of your attention.
We can't be too honest here, we just want to complain about not getting things exactly but slightly differently than we wanted.
the story at 53:13 where Adam talks abt netflix reminds me of this time a dude cancelled a date with me at the last minute because the okcupid algorithm said we weren't a good match lmao. even tho we met on a completely different app (i think it was bumble) he found my okc profile that i hadn't updated in years. i messaged him to ask if we were still going to the movies that night and he confronted me with our okc match score. his exact words were something like 'you're super cute, but according to the algorithm we wouldn't be compatible, so lets just cancel this" 💀
Re: Spotify, it's where I definitely miss album covers. Even cassette/CD inserts were better than nothing.
3:50 - we should really be saying systems when we are talking about "the algorithm", most of the time, that does much more justice to the amount of variables and interactions taking place, these systems are looping in multiple data sources and processing them with multiple algorithms in sometimes non-linear ways. We talk about systems in games, like a combat system, and thats much more analogous to what these "algorithms" are than a long string of mathematical symbols.
But that would be informed and using reason and rationality instead of sensationalism mongering.
the media crit, especially regional getting replaced by an algorithm has hurt video games journalism at an international level too
Ive had companies tell me I don't have enough social media reach to get hired....
Loving the new episode of Money Ruins Everything, heater topic this week.
I like how "the algorithm" works like horoscopes. Projection.
Here is your algo mandated engagement token. Bless. ❤
I just thought of another hack for YT. I use the 'Not interested' and 'Don't recommend this channel' options...A LOT. This tends to train the algorithm and keeps the real trashy stuff out of my suggestions feed. I also go to the Subscriptions option and it only recommends content from my subscriptions - it still only recommends about 10 of my 50+ Subscriptions, but at least it's not messing with me.
I t doesn't work for everyone, doesn't work for me at all, I click on "not interested" or "don't recommend channel" and youtube shows me the video more and more content of the same channel or topic.
I'm trying to escape drama channels about illuminaughti for over 6 months now, I never saw a single one, always click the not interest and youtube still thinks I want to see this, same things with pimple popping and anorexia content.
I wish they’d add that option to search results-and add an option of “hyperbolic” to the list of reasons.
Honestly i prefer the algorithm. You can sort youtube by subscriptions. It's inferior. I definitely prefer it to some rich media mogul who is choosing their friends to get a new show on nbc.
Its so weird to say the algorithm is more homogeneous when its customized to each individual.
If you only focus on the problems without sharing or exploring solutions to those problems and presenting people and organizations who are working on solving them you are just feeding learned hopelessness and despair and make a profit off of it. Adam I suggest you look at something called solutions journalism they have a lot of resources to help you.
Bottom line, the important things are still dictated by executives on most platforms. They decide when to make sure specific movies end up on Netflix/Disney/HBO/etc landing page or should get preferential treatment in the algorithm. If you want to be seen, be important enough to matter to be sorted by people and not the algo. Only RUclips and TikTok are completely devoid of humans making any decisions about content on the landing page.
I'm a machine learning expert, and -- like it or not, and many days I don't -- machine learning and AI are the way of the future. Computers aren't sentient* (*yet, as far as we can tell -- it's complicated); they're not going to "take over the world" anytime soon. But their human overlords certainly ARE sentient.
What alarms me is that even experts like me don't fully understand how machine learning works. I'm not talking about "prompt hacking," which is cargo cult at best, I'm talking about the deep math and science behind e.g. ANN's, deep learning, etc. -- the minimum barrier to entry is an understanding of linear algebra, calculus, and statistics. Needless to say, in a world where many people struggle to calculate a tip, this is not common.
What this means is that even with the best intentions -- and make no mistake, Google, Amazon, Twitter et al do NOT have the "best of intentions" -- we can't really predict how these things will work. And yet, machine learning algorithms ("models" is more appropriate than "algorithms" in this context, btw) are literally running our lives.
This worries me. Good segment.
I am not at all anti-AI; I'm a techno-optimist, and I welcome the machine overlords! But, ML *must not be allowed* to be the arbiter and gatekeeper of human culture, or it will kill human culture... which it is, as your video shows, already doing.
Genuine Art
But…but…but…the algorithm brought me here!
I'll just have you know that I listen to your podcast on Spotify even though I'm subscribed on RUclips. That could possibly be the case for other people as well and why it looks like subscribers aren't watching.
Tumblr died because it made its mark by allowing adult content, but then once it had those numbers behind it, sterilized the platform. Humanity was mad.
40:30 - I'm a subscriber, but I reached this video through the right hand 'suggested' list. News to me, but also indicative of reliance on the algorithm to give me videos I want to watch.
I wish Neil Postman were still alive to give a thorough academic beatdown of the present algorithm era. RIP, legend.
He would have more than enough to work with, now. When I think of him, and other truth-tellers we’ve lost, like Molly Ivins, Barbara Ehrenreich, & Edward Said, I wonder if it’s maybe better that they don’t see what’s happening, now.
@@bethmoore7722 I keep thinking back to 2010. Nicholas Carr (though not in the same league as those you mentioned) wrote What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, in 2010. This has been a pretty crappy millennium.
We still have Cory Doctorow
I hope you would do a show in Melbourne Australia in the foreseeable future
The algorithm put your show on my radar tho lol.
just doing my full body prostrations before the almighty algae rhythm. good talk.
if you think the algorithm warped our culture and our brains via social media, imagine how bad it’ll be when we introduce AI into it. Algorithms are just primitive versions of an AI. 😅
It will probably destroy us all, not because it will create consciousness but because we can't handle it, it will be a crazy world of not knowing what is true anymore and a machine doing whatever you do better and faster than you to the point of obsolescence.
The algorithm presented me with this video lol.