How to train your social media algorithm puppy / dragon to fetch whatever you want online
TEXT ON GRAPHIC: HOW TO TRAIN YOUR (ALGORITHM) DRAGON
The important thing is to be consistent when training your algorithm dragon
If you can’t right away try to do this for a few hours, then a day, then several days.
Your social media algorithm dragon can be your friend.
CLICK on what you want to see
LIKE, or LOVE react to boost it
If you don’t want to see something:
STOP and ignore
NEVER click on it or look at comments or share or engage
The story of “How to train your dragon” starts with dragons that terrorize the village of Berk. That is like the algorithms causing panic with what they share in the news feed. But then Hiccup meets and becomes friends with toothless the night fury dragon - that is what this fan art is about.
Then Hiccup’s friends from Berk also become friends with dragons too, each with a different dragon and then the dragons help the villagers and Hiccup’s human friends along with their dragon friends have adventures together.
It is a good analogy I think for people taming their news feed algorithm dragons and then finding lots of useful, fun and interesting stuff through them.
I think if Facebook provided us with a check box "show world news in your 'news feed'" most people would switch it off. The main issue for almost everyone nowadays like in the last year increasingly is that they get fake news pushed at them by algorithms on social media and it's not so much choice as them reacting by clicking on any headline they find scary or alarming. This plus the short form videos - TikTok, reels, short videos on Twitter and YouTube shorts.
It used to be that most people could get over their fears quite quickly with fact checking before this change which happened gradually but most noticeably for us here during the COVID pandemic.
But now it's far harder and we also get people coming back panicking again from things they had got over before until the algorithm started showing this stuff to them again.
So that is the issue we face now in fact checking added to what we had before.
Indeed many would not just switch off "show world news" but would like to go back to the old days when Facebook's news feed just showed you what your facebook friends posted in their feeds, and nothing else. I think if it added other options such as "cute kitties" or "pokemon" or "peaceful nature stories / reels" then many would click on one of those too and I think this would actually help Facebook restore some of the people who have left the platform.
Used to be that most of my relatives were on Facebook. Now the have almost all left especially the younger ones. It is no longer a way for families to stay in touch online. Partly about privacy but Facebook has pretty good privacy options now.
Also about just the amount of rubbish in news feeds making them unusable for what most people used to use it for - keeping in touch with their friends online wherever they are.
So the main issue is that Facebook doesn't give us an option to customize our news feed.
It is especially an issue for those who for whatever reason do most of their socializing online.
There is nothing here trying to scare you.
The algorithm has no idea of your reaction / feeling and it just registers this as interest and shows more of the same until your news feed fills with it.
But there is a solution. You need to train the algorithm. Right now the chances are the algorithm is training you. If you click on something scary or in some way addictive then it will show more of the same encouraging you to click on it more and more. This is the issue online harms bills try to address.
Instead you need to think of it as like a puppy. It is very willing to please. It will find for you anything you are interested in throughout billions of pieces of content online. But it has no idea what you like or what is true or what is good for your mental health.
So - you need to train the dog and consistently, ALWAYS click on and like ONLY what you want it to fetch for you.
If you sometimes click on cute kitties and sometimes click on reels from a someone claiming to be a time traveler from the future saying that some big disaster is going to happen then it's confused. It doesn't know what you want and will try both of those and whichever you show most interest in it gets more and more for you.
So you have to be very consistent. If you want to see cute kitties just never click on fake time travelers even for a laugh unless you want to see your timeline filled with those.
If you don't want it to fetch you ANY news at all - then the simplest thing is not to click on anything that looks even gray area news like and so on.
And to keep it up.
Panicking people engage very strongly with scary things.
If you click on one scary post out of hundreds it will go fetch more and more of them.
Be consistent. NEVER click on anything scary.
Your social media algorithm is like a marvelous puppy - you can train it to fetch anything from billions of posts on Facebook.
But it doesn’t know what you want to see.
It can only go by your clicks, likes, the reels you play etc.
To train it, click, like, love, play WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE
Photo: Puppy wuppy, a photo of puppy called Roxy by Michael.
I trained my algorithm puppy on Facebook to fetch photos of colourful named wild birds and beautiful nature scenes. Named wild birds because the unnamed ones nowadays are often fake AI and I don't want to see fake AI willd birds.
It only took a few days of consistently not responding to anything else.
Click on them. Like. And if especially keen on it then love react.
I now have added a few other things e.g. corrugated iron buildings.
And then VERY CAREFUL not to click on anything you don't want to see.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
Facebook feed - a place for fun stuff.
NOT FOR NEWS. If it looks like news - to say “no” don’t click, read, play, like, nothing.
This is a screenshot from part of my own feed.
the two items are: https://www.facebook.com/groups/naturewildlifebirdphotography/posts/1619754655381283/
and https://www.facebook.com/groups/1233601416666031/posts/29008557215410411/
Notice that I liked them both. That is how you tell the algorithm what to get for you.
The algorithms today are marvellous and very effective.
How I trained Twitter - you can train the algorithm to fetch reliable news but hard to do and not always consistent
So what about news? It’s usually just called a “feed” now. But often referred to as a “news feed”.
But despite the name, social media is not the place to find out good information about things that scare you, e..g warss.
This only works if you very carefully train your algorithm dragon to find only reliable news which is not easy to do.
For easily scared people it is best to train it not to find news at all and instead get your news from more reliable sources.
However you CAN train your algorithm dragon to fetch reliable news, at least on Twitter.
I use Twitter differently from Facebook. There I follow experts on climate change, infectious diseases, the Ukraine war, Gaza strip, the US election now, and so on. If an expert shares something by another expert I check out their twitter feed and follow them too if they are suitable. And I click almost only on the things I want to see there - though I also click on a few fun things for relaxation and to break it up, but not too many as I don't want my feed to fill with fun stuff.
In this way I have a Twitter feed that is superb for finding the latest on global warming and action on climate change, the election, on the Jan 06 / presidential immunity legal proceedings, on the Ukraine war and Zelensky's victory plan, the latest in Israel / Lebanon, I still get updates on COVID and on masking etc etc. Just by going to my news feed on Twitter from time to time I don't even need to search for it.
But this requires you to be very disciplined. It becomes second nature once you do it. But it is so easy to get distracted even knowing what this will do to your news feed. Luckily Twitter responds very quickly and if you start to get lots of stuff you don't want to see, then just not responding to any of it and it quickly disappears again.
It is also never 100%. I get a few mistakes shared in my feed. There are some people who are very responsive to the latest developments in the Ukraine war for instance but they don’t check things and sometimes share unconfirmed rumours that turn out to be false. Other times the same people may be the first to alert me to a major new development. So when I see something from one of them I search for confirmation from someone more reliable.
So - it isn't necessarily about avoiding all news on social media. It can be very good.
I find Twitter especially useful for the Ukraine war, if I only had access to mainstream news I'd be very ill-informed about it. Almost all that I know about it now comes from experts on Twitter.
If I only had mainstream news I'd have no idea how weak the Russian position is in Ukraine. That is based on BOTH Ukrainian AND Russian sources including many people sharing translations of whatever ordinary Russian soldiers,. officers and milbloggers are currently talking about on Telegram. I'd have no way of knowing this without Twitter and then to some extent Institute for Study of War - and other sources.
Most people will want to train their algorithm to not fetch any news ever
So for most people social media is NOT a good place to get news. Sadly you need to TRAIN your social media dragon to fetch you what you want to see and not ever fetch you news.
To train our social media puppies / dragons we need to learn to respond in ways that are unintuitive at first - but you can learn to do it
So anyway - social media is what you make of it, but some of it is highly unintuitive and you need to respond in ways that aren't very instinctive but you can learn to do it and make it automatic and this makes for a much healthier online life.
I hope that social media eventually gives us tools to do this via simple check boxes etc rather than to have to carefully train our "algorithm dogs" as I described here. But meanwhile this is "how to train your dragon" as it were - as applied to social media feeds.
The main message here is that you must be 100% consistent. NEVER click on ANYTHING in your feed that you don’t want to see.
Even months later your puppy / dragon will try from time to time to fetch you some scary BS. Remember it doesn’t know it’s scary. The puppy / algorithm / dragon has no understanding. There is nothing there knows what it is that it brings to you. It just goes by resemblances. But if you have spent months training it to return things that scare you, it will keep trying those things from time to time in case you develop an old interest.
For the puppy it is like, say, someone who was very interested in stamp collecting for six months. They wanted photos of old and rare stamps and that is all they were interested in. If this person then loses interest in stamps - the puppy will qujckly adapt tot he new interest. But from time to time it will bring back a particularly rare or interesting stamp - one that got lots of likes and shares - in case you might have got interested again.
It’s just the same with scary BS. From time to time it will try something that was a match with what you used to click on for months. When this happens you need to be alert. “This is news, I don’t want to see news”.
It needs to be as automatic as the way you look both ways before you cross a road.
We all learnt these rules as a child, how to cross streets safely.
Video: Let’s Go Walking! Lesson 2: Crossing Streets Safely
If you are able to cross streets safely you can also learn to use social media safely without the fake click bait stories in your feed.
To use social media safely the basic rules are
Never EVER click on news in your feed
- remember journalists for the Associated Press, BBC, PBS etc can see the same things you see. If they aren’t running the story and it should be global news - it is FAKE
[unless you are very experienced and know how to use social media for fact checking like I do with Twitter]Never EVER click on anything you don’t want to see
Every time you use your feed, be sure to like / love the posts, photographs and reels you want to see even if you don’t click through or play the reels.
- this is the only way the algorithm puppy / dragon knows what to fetch for you and you need to keep doing it every day or it gradually forgets
The good side of this is that it IS possible to train your personalized social media algorithm dragon to fetch you whatever you want it to fetch. In this analogy, it is very willing to help. You just need to give it very very clear instructions and then it is a marvellous companion to find what you want on social media.
Image: fan art for How To Train Your Dragon by sorata-s on DeviantArt
How social media companies could solve this issue quickly - and at the same time boost engagement and revenue
Social media companies could solve this quickly by giving us ways to tell our algorithm puppies what to fetch for us, other than by training it by our own behaviour, which is unintuitive.
It would be great if there were options such as to:
Remove news entirely from social media feeds for those who don’t want to use social media in this way
Only show news from reliable sources
Only show the doings of your friends and those you follow – as in the early days of Facebook
[my relatives mostly left Facebook when it lost its focus on the doings of their relatives and friends – if that was an option they’d likely still be using it]Show content based on a list of interests – such as show relaxing nature photos and reels, or anime, or whatever interests the user.
[I trained my Facebook algorithm to show colourful photos and videos of named species of birds from around the world, and other relaxing nature photos and videos - just by clicking on them and liking them – since I could get it to do that easily, it shows that it could be a preset].
Social media companies would likely attract new users and retain some of the customers they currently lose - if they let us customize our news feeds.
There is lots of interesting and appealing content on social media nowadays and if you could configure it to see what you want, when you want, I think it would lead to more, not less engagement.
This could be useful for everyone.
As an example I do use Twitter for news about the Ukraine war and other topics useful for fact checking. I am careful not to click too much on fun content as it would make it less useful for fact checking.
Instead I click on fun content in Facebook which I find is useless for news fact checking anyway.
But it would be great to be able to use Twitter like Facebook as there is so much fun stuff there.
It would be great to be able to toggle between visiting it for fact checking and visiting for recreation / fun.
Also to have pre-selected options. Anime, Nature etc. The social media companies could also add a way for users to make their own themes for others to install. For instance I could give others an option to clone my feed algorithm trained to show colourful birds and to leave out any AI generated fake birds.
Also you need a way to lock in your algorithm, to tell your algorithm puppy that it’s got it right now, it’s perfect, no more changes. My colourful birds algorithm is perfect for me now, but I have ot keep training it by liking, and loving colourful birds every day so it doesn’t forget what I want to see.
Speaking as a programmer myself, I’m sure this wouldn’t be hard to do. The brilliant Facebook programmesr could likely have a feature like this ready for Facebook to start testing in weeks, and then roll it out to everyone a few weeks later.
If anyone reading this has connections with social media companies and has their ears do suggest this to them!
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