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Harvey_Rabbit t1_j2xxv7s wrote

Reply to comment by mdjank in They say we're past "social media" and are now in the age of algorithms: the "recommendation media." by retepretepretep

I guess I'm just wondering if this power can be used for good instead of evil. Like, if I'm trying to lose weight, make it show me things that make eating healthy and working out look fun and eating crap look bad. The way it is now, they might identify that I engage with pictures of candy or fastfood, so they sell ads to crap food companies to get me to buy their crap food. Or, how about we incorporate smart watches into it, so they can measure my vitals. Say I want to get to bed at 10, I want my algorithm to start showing me soothing things at like 9:30. Over time, it might learn the kind of things that keep me up at night and avoid them.

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mdjank t1_j2y0ffi wrote

Gamification of self improvement activities are its own industry. You can go buy a piece of software that already does that.

All social media can do is share your progress or lack there of.

Think of it this way. You're not going to stop alcoholics by putting a salad bar in a tavern and charging people to eat their salad.

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Still_Study_6059 t1_j31cdei wrote

That wasn't entirely what he was saying though. Obese people usually come from obese environments, and so it is with other stuff. I need to read up on the science again, but commercials doing their best to make eating shit look great is definitely a thing.

What if you could pay to simply avoid that. In the Netherlands we've opened up the gambling market and with that came a flurry of gambling advertisements. And lo and behold we suddenly have a lot more people addicted to gambling, so now the ads are getting axed by 2025 or something.

Food works through the same mechanisms, as did smoking.

N=1 here, but if I watch the food channel or things like our version the great British bake off I find myself craving "comfort food"(diabetes on a fork). I've rid my life completely from that and have found a couple communities that actually are about that healthy lifestyle and am doing much better now. From 110 to 80 kg's on 1.87m. Avoiding exposure has made that process infinitely more easy to do for me.

Now imagine you could tailor social media to do that for you. Maybe you already can btw, simply by using the current algorithms to look for healthfood etc.

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mdjank t1_j32oxg0 wrote

I already explained how algorithms worked in this post.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/102zkm0/they_say_were_past_social_media_and_are_now_in/j2ycwdp?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3

Tailoring your own social media to work for you is probable. It would require disciplined responses directed by unbiased self analysis. In other words, it's not bloody likely.

Then there's the question of limiting the dataset in your feed. You do not have direct control over the data in your feed. You can only control which people can publish to your feed.

You can cut people out of your feed for some level of success. The more people you cut, the less it is a "tool to keep you connected". It stops being social media.

The only sure way to keep from seeing material on social media is to not look at social media. You remove the drunk from the tavern. Change your environment by removing yourself from it.

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Perfect-Rabbit5554 t1_j2yqbu1 wrote

In theory it's possible, but the incentives aren't there and when the technology is developed, it'll come after the initial mind flaying phase we're seeing now.

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D2G23 t1_j2zw9rx wrote

I liked one kettlebell video, once in 2018, instagram has shown me kb workouts every 5th video since. To be fair, I now swing a lot of bells, so…

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