• otacon239@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    After I’ve spent several years away from algo-feed-based social media, I can’t imagine going back. The sheer amount of content that I didn’t consent to witnessing was wild. The frequency of shock and gore was pretty much at least weekly, if not daily.

    It wasn’t until I left FB, joined Reddit, unsubbed from all the defaults, and started adding subs as a whitelist rather than a blacklist, did I start seeing my reactions to news shift. I started becoming way less reactionary over time and engaged far less with bait.

    When they killed 3rd-party apps and I came to Lemmy, there was a lot less content, but it was also obvious the advertisers weren’t here generating bait. I’m now back to a blacklist on Lemmy, but I also don’t get hit with engagement bait here like I did on previous platforms.

    • ABetterTomorrow@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      Dude same here, exact journey. Not sure about you but growing up from chat room to blogs to social media (late 30s now), I ditched social media back in 2014 and did the exact path to this data.

      I don’t know how else to express a cliche, damn the fresh air and awareness. You really do feel so much better off of all of that. That goes for news apps too. Find a format that doesn’t fuck with your metal health.

      • IronBird@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        my worry is that as this non-federated stuff picks up steam…it’s only a matter of time till the “influencers” and stealth advos follow. they’re parasites that follow any sufficiently large gathering of humans

        • ABetterTomorrow@sh.itjust.works
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          16 hours ago

          I almost disagreed and then agreed but it’s both depending on your perspective. They will come and there’s no doubt about it. Hence the YouTubers trying to make a splash after the whole “I’m switching to Linux” trend.

          But

          I think the algorithm is different here and it’s based on the app you used and not their servers. Difficult design.

          So you might see some pop up like the comics but it doesn’t last that long on top of a feed.