Meinung: Unter 16-Jährigen den Zugang zu sozialen Medien zu verbieten, ist eine halbe Sache. Wir sollten toxische Algorithmen verbieten

The N.Macedonian Government came up with a stupid idea Parents should force their kids to stop using Social Media… 

Both please

Sure, we should ban „toxic“ algorithms. But the real question is: how? Like, technically speaking. Banning something requires a law, and a legal text requires a precise definition of what isn’t allowed. So how do we *technically define* what makes a social media algorithm „toxic“? I think that’s a very hard question to answer, and that’s why I don’t believe we’ll solve this kind of problem anytime soon…

Make Meta accountable for bot and troll activity, it’s becoming dangerous political weapon.

What we should do is force a decoupling of the algorithm from the platform. You should be able to choose your own 3rd party algorithm which prioritizes what you want to see and how it recommends content.

Parents might choose something which pushes educational content and not Andrew Tate, religious nuts might choose something which reflects their values, but you should have a choice. Most people I think would just choose to see what their friends are posting and watching.

Social media companies would never allow this on their own because they relentlessly A/B test to push toxic garbage to push emotional buttons and maximize „engagement“. But we don’t need to „engage“ more with social media, we need less and better.

So it’s time for regulation and to force a change, make them dumb carriers again, they host content, people decide for themselves what to see, if their algorithm is showing them something, it’s because that’s how they set their algorithm.

Social media companies can still be profitable as businesses, just not maximally profitable, because maximally profitable means dark patterns, gambling mechanics, rage bait, and other toxic forms of manipulation that we should be able to opt out of by choosing a different algorithm.

YEEEEES this is what I’ve been saying. For the love of fucking god, ban *all* algorithmic feeds.

I want 2010 back, where we had fucking control over what content we consumed. Almost everything we hate about Social Media today stems from the companies removing our option to control what we consume.

People stopped using Facebook to talk with their friends, because Facebook stopped showing you your friend’s posts. That’s the main reason Facebook turned into the hellhole it is today.

It’s also why stories feel so much better, because it is now the only feed you have, where you actually control what you consume. At least as far as I’m aware, they haven’t started showing random shit in you stories on Instagram (Just ads).

Banning all algorithmic feeds circumvents any grey zone issues.
Just allow for content feeds to only show content from people you have consented to be shown content from, and allow for basic search and sorting options.

If you want a browse feature, having it be based on active search, and related content (I realize that’s determined by an algorithm, but you know). It’s literally how it worked when YouTube was still great – how they decided that making the sidebar videos completely unrelated repetative garbage is beyond me. I run an add-on now that removes all suggested videos on YouTube