> It's not just LLMs, it's how the algorithms promote engagement. i.e. rage bait, videos with obvious inaccuracies etc.

I guess, but I'm on quite a few "algorithm-free" forums where the same thing happens. I think it's just human nature. The reason it's under control on HN is rigorous moderation; when the moderators are asleep, you often see dubious political stuff bubble up. And in the comments, there's often a fair amount of patently incorrect takes and vitriol.

I know that some folks dislike it, but Bluesky and atproto in particular have provided the perfect tools to achieve this. There are some people, largely those who migrated from Twitter, who mostly treat Bluesky like a all-liberal version of Twitter, which results in a predictably toxic experience, like bizarro-world Twitter. But the future of a less toxic social media is in there, if we want it. I've created my own feeds that allow topics I'm interested in and blacklist those I'm not -- I'm in complete control. For what it's worth, I've also had similarly pleasant experiences using Mastodon, although I don't have the same tools that I do on Bluesky.

> it's how the algorithms promote engagement.

They are destroying our democratic societies and should be heavily regulated. The same will become true for AI.

Do LinkedIn as well. I got rid of it earlier this year. The "I am so humbled/blessed to be promoted/reassigned/fired.." posts reached a level of parody that I just couldn't stomach any longer. I felt more free immediately.

N.B. Still employed btw.

> I deleted my Facebook account a couple of years ago and my Twitter one yesterday.

I never signed up for Facebook or Twitter. My joke is I am waiting until they become good. They are still shitty and toxic from what I can tell from the outside, so I'll wait a little longer ;-)

I eliminated twitter when a certain rich guy took over.

Actually, I deleted my account there before, as twitter sent me spam mail trying to lecture me what I write. There was nothing wrong with what I wrote - twitter was wrong. I can not accept AI-generated spam by twitter, so I went away. Don't really miss it either, but Elon really worsened the platform significantly with his antics.

> Just because I said to someone 'Brexit was dumb', I don't expect to get fed 1000 accounts talking about it 24/7. It's tedious and unproductive.

Yeah, I can relate to this, but mostly what annoyed me was that twitter interfered "we got a complaint about you - they are right, you are a troublemaker". I don't understand why twitter wants to interfere into communication. Reddit is even worse, since moderators have such a wild range of what is "acceptable" and what is not. Double-standards everywhere on reddit.

No, there needs to be control over the algorithms that get used. You ought to be able to tune it. There needs to be a Google fuu equivalent for social media. Or, instead of one platform one algorithm, let users define the algorithm to a certain degree, using llms to help with that and then you can allow others to access your algorithms too. Asking for someone Facebook to tweak the algorithm is not going to help imo.

One could absolutely push algorithms that personalize towards what the user wants to see. I think LLMs could be amazing at this. But that's not the maximally profitable algorithm, so nobody does it.

As so many have said, enragement equals engagement equals profit.

All my social media accounts are gone as well. They did nothing for me and no longer serve any purpose.

TBF Bluesky does offer a chronological feed, but the well-intentioned blocklists just became the chief tool for the mean girls of the site.

> Just because I said to someone 'Brexit was dumb', I don't expect to get fed 1000 accounts talking about it 24/7. It's tedious and unproductive.

I’m not the biggest Twitter user but I didn’t find it that difficult to get what I wanted out of it.

You already discovered the secret: You get more of what you engage with. If you don’t want to hear a lot of Brexit talk, don’t engage with Brexit content. Unfollow people who are talking a lot about Brexit

If you want to see more of something, engage with it. Click like. Follow those people. Leave a friendly comment.

On the other hand, some people are better off deleting social media if they can’t control their impulses to engage with bait. If you find yourself getting angry at the Brexit content showing up and feeling compelled to add your two cents with a comment or like, then I suppose deleting your account is the only viable option.

Just started using Minifeed (free account). I am still nostalgic about Google Reader.

>it’s not just X — it’s Y

on the opposite site, you know what they say, "there is no algo. for truth"

That's the same algorithm Youtube has and is more blatant. Phone mics and your coworker's proximity does a great job at picking up things you've said even after disabling mic access plus airplane mode just by process of elimination.

I'll only use an LLM for projects and building tools, like a junior dev in their 20s.

Your facebook feed is now at this URL: https://www.facebook.com/?filter=all&sk=h_chr

an interesting thing about Twitter, I find, is that plenty of rage bait and narcissism bait surface, but amid very highly technical information which is also published there, and extremely useful (immunology, genomics, and of course computational) to me.

i've learned pretty well how to 'guide' the algorithm so the tech stuff that's super valuable (to me) does not vanish, but still get nonsense bozo posts in the mix.

I call it AI slop and human slop.