this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. No politics
    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (22 children)

Can someone explain to me why everyone on this site thinks that everything bad about other social media sites is somehow being forced upon the users to enslave them to "the algorithm"? It's like socialist Qanon.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (15 children)

Sooooo, there’s a lot of truth to it.

Once a site is big enough that they want to cash in on it, they develop tools and ai and make choices that are designed to keep you on the site longer.

These tools and ai quickly discover that the way to keep you engaged is to keep you enraged. Content that angers you will keep your engagement longer and keep you coming back.

This is well researched and I’ll cite sources if you need it.

So what happens is that the ai, while it isn’t designed explicitly to show right wing content, will end up learning that showing that content accomplished it’s actual goal. It’s original goal being “Keep people on the site longer”

Right wing content fits a nice niche where it engages a lot of people. Donald trump claiming that he lost the election will enraged the right because they believe in his horse shit and that the election was stolen, and the left gets enraged by it because it causes unnecessary violence like Jan 6th. The AI loves that because it’s fairly universally enraging, and engaging most people.

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