Jason Toney on algorithm-speak, main character energy, and why a simple question about music charts revealed how badly we've forgotten how to talk to each other online."
Introducing a network for thoughtful conversations
The quality of conversations on the Internet is terrible. Most platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc. optimize for engagement as their key metric. This spawns and rewards behavior that leads to bragging of gameable metrics such as likes and followers, self-feeding thought bubbles, knee-jerk reactions, “if you’re not on our side, you’re on their side” mentality, and thought policing even by people who think they’re fighting for a good cause. Today’s Internet doesn’t incentiviz
Marc Andreessen – Why Software Is Eating The World
2011 Big Tunechi op-ed from the WSJ. Horowitz: Thank you for everything you’ve done to make RapGenius happen–I write about why it’s one of the internet’s foundational sources of
The Turing Collapse | Jason G. Butterfield | Offprint
When we can no longer tell who's real online
Why the fuss about conversational programming?
First, there isn’t much fuss … yet. But there will be.
Bias, Skew, and Search Engines Are Sufficient to Explain Online Toxicity
U.S. political discourse seems to have fissioned into discrete bubbles, each reflecting its own distorted image of the world. Many blame machine-learning algorithms that purportedly maximize “engagement”—serving up content that keeps YouTube or Facebook users watching videos or scrolling through their feeds—for radicalizing users or strengthening their partisanship. Sociologist Shoshana Zuboff15 even argues that “surveillance capitalism” uses optimized algorithmic feedback for “automated behavioral modification” at scale, writing the “music” that users then “dance” to.
Bias, Skew, and Search Engines Are Sufficient to Explain Online Toxicity
U.S. political discourse seems to have fissioned into discrete bubbles, each reflecting its own distorted image of the world. Many blame machine-learning algorithms that purportedly maximize “engagement”—serving up content that keeps YouTube or Facebook users watching videos or scrolling through their feeds—for radicalizing users or strengthening their partisanship. Sociologist Shoshana Zuboff15 even argues that “surveillance capitalism” uses optimized algorithmic feedback for “automated behavioral modification” at scale, writing the “music” that users then “dance” to.
Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine on AI Slop, Quality Content & Social Media Fragmentation
(please don't) add me to the group
We talk a lot about how broken the internet is for all of us as individuals. Doomscrolling, algorithmic feeds, overall exhaustion at The Horrors. But this...
After the feed with Eli Pariser, Ben Smith, and Jasmine Sun
Social media algorithms don't allow us to understand or control what we see online and why... until now! Top scholars @jonathanstray.com and @noupside.bsky.social are sharing @mysky.social, a tool that allows users to adjust their feed’s priorities and explains why certain posts appear over others.
🎛️📲 Meet the algorithm you can actually control and understand
newpublic.substack.comThis is, at it's core why I hate what openai launched with ChatGPT. It's also why I think social agents are interesting and why Claude Code, as a power tool enabled interesting conversations with my collaborators.
tweety fish oh wow like a chimera or something spoooky
there is a strong intellectual tradition in cognitive science (that goes well beyond Chalmers) around thinking of many of the tools we create (rulers, books, maps, whathaveyou) and a lot of our social interactions as necessarily integrated parts of our cognition and integral parts of our humanity
You have to mainline info all the time because our information tools make you do so. Infinite scroll timelines, group chats with no beginning or end, recommender algorithms with no sense of place — all of them require constant vigilance to make sense of. We can do better.
Charlie Warzel
had a death in the family and was almost completely off the internet for a few days & my observation is that there is too much happening too fast such that basic facts abt the world are difficult to ascertain unless you are mainlining info all the time & doing that seems to drive people insane
I think of all of the AI / ML / CS tech out there, speech generation freaks me out the most.
Opensourcing TADA: Fast, Reliable Speech Generation Through Text-Acoustic Synchronization
www.hume.aiblacksky.community now determines trending topics for our app based on conversations within Blacksky’s community of users.
Algorithm Mediated Experiences
On the effects of algorithms on everyday experiences
The machines are fine. I'm worried about us.
Resisting the Hivemind: Pluribus, Generative AI, and Empire - Reactor
The Last Quiet Thing
Generative Ethics: How AI Model Choice Shapes Social and Financial Performance
Political Sorting Can Drive AI Models Apart Through User Feedback
Network dynamics of social influence in the wisdom of crowds
