I am one of those people who has severely limited my use of social media nowadays (most days I don’t use it) as a result of this current setup. I really wish there was an option on instagram to return to a version that only showed me content from people I followed on my feed. It used to be this way—the feed was just content from people I followed, and then there was a separate “explore” tab in case I CHOSE to see what else was going on out there.
The fact that this choice has been taken away, and the fact that I know I am being manipulated every time I use social media, has made it too icky for me to use. I know you tend to advocate for staying on social media instead of leaving it, but I just feel so much better emotionally and physically when I don’t use it.
I am sad to miss out on some things, but I really can’t find a healthy way to engage with something that is designed to be so addictive and emotionally evocative. It’s also discouraging to feel like I need to adapt my own way of communicating to the trends of the algorithm in order to be seen. Doesn’t seem worth the loss of integrity. I wish there was a better option.
I’m also trying to find a balance with social media. One thing I’m gonna start trying, you having reminded me of its existence, is the following page on Instagram. Good news, or maybe bad, Instagram does have a feature so you only see the people you follow. For me, if I press on the Instagram logo on the top left of the home feed it gives you the option to only see who you follow or favourites. Good luck!
I also think of it as an "inattention economy." So many products are now escapist in nature, with "escape from" and "escape to" becoming part of the same value proposition. Perhaps "engagement" can be both at once, but it may never solve whatever problems you are "disengaging" from, leaving you in the cycle.
Do you think there’s a better metric for sustained attention or engagement? This seems to mirror how society has set up several other “difficult” to measure characteristics. SATs don’t measure intelligence, but they’re the best that society has come up with for standardized, in aggregate, intelligence metrics for high schoolers. Anecdotally, we saw in the recent OpenAI hallucination paper that benchmarks encourage LLMs to randomly guess rather than admit uncertainty—so benchmarks are a poor metric of LLM capabilities as well, but they’re claimed to be the best we can do. Is attention or engagement the same—will it just be labeled a “difficult to measure” outcome?
The current Pinterest CEO recently did an interview on the Social Currency podcast about this. I haven’t watched the whole interview yet (https://youtu.be/7KEgORT0__w?si=3g9LGrjnS_O_vC-w), but his explicit position is that these are all editorial choices and that you can actually do better than optimizing for slop. From what I understand, this required a lot of long term trust and patience from investors because the payoff was not instantaneous. I suspect a lot of these companies are chasing slop because the financial sector measures progress quarterly, and controversy is the easiest way to game (or “goodhart”) engagement within that timeframe to show results. In short: yes, there are better metrics, but they’re implicitly de-incentivized right now; it’s like crash dieting vs lifestyle changes.
I think it's interesting to take into account the trend of escaping the algorithms - moving into "dumbphones" (restricting features of smart phones or just using flip phones with less functionality) or movement back into less curated media (the way mp3 players are re-surging in popularity instead of streaming music).
But what does this even mean for stuff like TikTok and Youtube? only consuming content on patreon? RSS feeds for creators you already like? It's not like you can go shop at a local grocery store or farmer's market in most places, considering the way that supermarkets drive them out of business. There may be no way to directly bypass that flashy bag of chips, or if there is, it's at a much higher cost.
I haven't read algospeak yet, and I figure something similar to this is probably covered there. That being, "the algorithm" becoming inseparable to the way we consume.
I'll buy algospeak as soon as I finish my current book queue (approx. 1 year lol, I've been bad).
Loved the grocery store metaphor! Makes the micro-level dynamics of attention really tangible. It places a lot of responsibility and agency at the individual level.
Something to add: Meso-level forces (social networks, community norms) and macro-level structures (platform design, ad incentives, regulation) shape what we see and how we respond.
Awareness is essential, but so is understanding the system that conditions it. Sometimes, shifting the environment matters as much as training ourselves to look differently.
I think that there is one place in the social world where there is still an attention economy and that's YouTube's home page. When you enter through desktop you can find half a dozen different thumbnails where you can find 2-3 different types of videos and you select which one answers your content craving better in that moment. Although the 6 videos will be different and improved every time you get to the homepage, there's still a bit of action from the user. It's just 6 bags of chips of different flavours fighting for your attention.
I think this is a really important view to have -- cognitive flexibility is more important than ever in a world that wants us to turn off our brain. I'd be interested in your thoughts on how we can "subversively harness these tools."
I am one of those people who has severely limited my use of social media nowadays (most days I don’t use it) as a result of this current setup. I really wish there was an option on instagram to return to a version that only showed me content from people I followed on my feed. It used to be this way—the feed was just content from people I followed, and then there was a separate “explore” tab in case I CHOSE to see what else was going on out there.
The fact that this choice has been taken away, and the fact that I know I am being manipulated every time I use social media, has made it too icky for me to use. I know you tend to advocate for staying on social media instead of leaving it, but I just feel so much better emotionally and physically when I don’t use it.
I am sad to miss out on some things, but I really can’t find a healthy way to engage with something that is designed to be so addictive and emotionally evocative. It’s also discouraging to feel like I need to adapt my own way of communicating to the trends of the algorithm in order to be seen. Doesn’t seem worth the loss of integrity. I wish there was a better option.
I’m also trying to find a balance with social media. One thing I’m gonna start trying, you having reminded me of its existence, is the following page on Instagram. Good news, or maybe bad, Instagram does have a feature so you only see the people you follow. For me, if I press on the Instagram logo on the top left of the home feed it gives you the option to only see who you follow or favourites. Good luck!
I also think of it as an "inattention economy." So many products are now escapist in nature, with "escape from" and "escape to" becoming part of the same value proposition. Perhaps "engagement" can be both at once, but it may never solve whatever problems you are "disengaging" from, leaving you in the cycle.
Do you think there’s a better metric for sustained attention or engagement? This seems to mirror how society has set up several other “difficult” to measure characteristics. SATs don’t measure intelligence, but they’re the best that society has come up with for standardized, in aggregate, intelligence metrics for high schoolers. Anecdotally, we saw in the recent OpenAI hallucination paper that benchmarks encourage LLMs to randomly guess rather than admit uncertainty—so benchmarks are a poor metric of LLM capabilities as well, but they’re claimed to be the best we can do. Is attention or engagement the same—will it just be labeled a “difficult to measure” outcome?
The current Pinterest CEO recently did an interview on the Social Currency podcast about this. I haven’t watched the whole interview yet (https://youtu.be/7KEgORT0__w?si=3g9LGrjnS_O_vC-w), but his explicit position is that these are all editorial choices and that you can actually do better than optimizing for slop. From what I understand, this required a lot of long term trust and patience from investors because the payoff was not instantaneous. I suspect a lot of these companies are chasing slop because the financial sector measures progress quarterly, and controversy is the easiest way to game (or “goodhart”) engagement within that timeframe to show results. In short: yes, there are better metrics, but they’re implicitly de-incentivized right now; it’s like crash dieting vs lifestyle changes.
I think it's interesting to take into account the trend of escaping the algorithms - moving into "dumbphones" (restricting features of smart phones or just using flip phones with less functionality) or movement back into less curated media (the way mp3 players are re-surging in popularity instead of streaming music).
But what does this even mean for stuff like TikTok and Youtube? only consuming content on patreon? RSS feeds for creators you already like? It's not like you can go shop at a local grocery store or farmer's market in most places, considering the way that supermarkets drive them out of business. There may be no way to directly bypass that flashy bag of chips, or if there is, it's at a much higher cost.
I haven't read algospeak yet, and I figure something similar to this is probably covered there. That being, "the algorithm" becoming inseparable to the way we consume.
I'll buy algospeak as soon as I finish my current book queue (approx. 1 year lol, I've been bad).
Loved the grocery store metaphor! Makes the micro-level dynamics of attention really tangible. It places a lot of responsibility and agency at the individual level.
Something to add: Meso-level forces (social networks, community norms) and macro-level structures (platform design, ad incentives, regulation) shape what we see and how we respond.
Awareness is essential, but so is understanding the system that conditions it. Sometimes, shifting the environment matters as much as training ourselves to look differently.
I’m from Nepal and after reading your work I truly believe that the algorithmic gaze and memes played a HUGE part in overthrowing the government.
I’ve cited your work in a first-hand report of the Nepalese memetic revolution. Would love to know what you think.
Here’s the blog: https://www.memelord.blog/p/nepal-protest-memes
loved this essay and absolutely agree with everything
I think that there is one place in the social world where there is still an attention economy and that's YouTube's home page. When you enter through desktop you can find half a dozen different thumbnails where you can find 2-3 different types of videos and you select which one answers your content craving better in that moment. Although the 6 videos will be different and improved every time you get to the homepage, there's still a bit of action from the user. It's just 6 bags of chips of different flavours fighting for your attention.
If anyone’s interested in a piece covering similar issues in much more detail, would recommend this post of mine from back in June.
https://open.substack.com/pub/arachnemag/p/the-leviathan-the-hand-and-the-maelstrom?r=18kjq3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
I think this is a really important view to have -- cognitive flexibility is more important than ever in a world that wants us to turn off our brain. I'd be interested in your thoughts on how we can "subversively harness these tools."