The way that all these tech companies decided that the users couldn't simply turn those features off is maddening. And the "See this Less Often" option doesn't seem to do anything at all on apps like Facebook.
The way that all these tech companies decided that the users couldn't simply turn those features off is maddening. And the "See this Less Often" option doesn't seem to do anything at all on apps like Facebook.
They have a tremendous disincentive to do this. Endless scrolling, combined with a massive amount of algorithmically fine-tuned content to satisfy preferences that you didn't even knew you had, is effectively a digital version of cocaine. Giving you the right to reclaim your attention is a pathway towards healthy use, which for most is no more than a couple minutes per day for any social media platform.
Your dealer would be the last person you'd expect to teach you about addiction avoidance.
There should be legislation that requires company's allow "opting out" of individualized algorithmic feeds. I'm fine if you want to show me videos similar to channels I've explicitly subscribed to. But tracking my every interaction and using that to serve content I never asked for is everything that's wrong with modern social media.
Maybe we need an initiative like "stop killing games".