Comment by FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone on What happened?

As soon as the algorithm become engagement based, instead of “positive reaction” based,

ie. algorithms now promote a post by how many reactions it has recieved, even if these reactions are negative, when it used to promote posts based on positive reaction.

So now ragebait dominates most social media algorithms.

Yeah, it’s precisely why I stopped using every social media except the fediverse. It was toxic to my mental health.

I feel safe assuming it’s been similarly toxic to everyone else’s, just some people haven’t zeroed in on that being the problem.

Even Lemmy was like this. Especially with the default comment sort “active”, which promotes comments that lead to arguments. My experience has been better since I switched to “top”.

I still haven’t found a good post sort that works for me. “Hot” and “Scaled” literally only promote stuff posted in the past two hours. “Top” is kinda sad because you always see posts 1 day old, and “Active” has the negative engagement problem.

The best solution I’ve found is be on an instance with downvotes disabled and sort by “active” but it isn’t perfect.

Thanks for the tips. I’m going to play around with it. Mine is set to hot currently, but maybe that’s not my cuppa.

I feel the same way and now typically use “Top 6 Hours”

…which is a actually how I found this thread.

I usually go by top of the last 6 hours and top of the last 12 hours. is that just a thing in my app?

No its built in and across all the apps.

Thats my preference as well (top 6/12). Thats for all though, subscribed I go new. But its pretty niche communities and not a huge amount of activity.

I always sort by New and let the chaos chips fall where they may

maybe we should be able to blend several of these like i’ll take 20% of top day and 30% of active and 5% controversial… lemmy would grow more of the content was more suitable.

I just sort by newest over 12/24 hours. I’ve found I tend to argue much less with idiots if I get in and out before the troublemakers show up.

I just subscribe to communities I like, then sort by “New” to read those “Subscribed” communities. When I run out, I change to “Scaled” and “All”.

algorithms now promote a post by how many reactions it has recieved, even if these reactions are negative

ESPECIALLY if those reactions are negative. Rage and fear are THE top engagement drivers and engagement means retention means ad impressions means dollars.

That it also means the end of democracy is immaterial to the billionaire ghouls in charge, of course.

It wouldn’t be hard to enact laws regulating how algorithms are allowed to use views, reactions and downvotes. Metrics like “Controversial” and Reddit’s “Hot” (that sums upvotes and downvotes like they’re all the same) would be forbidden and governments could demand deactivation of metrics, algorithms or even the entire platform.

Of course such “anti-ragebait” regulations wouldn’t fix the issue but I believe it would significantly mitigate the overall state of nowadays internet.

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