How to train your social media algorithm 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 dog. 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.
I trained my algorithm dog 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.
This is very effective. The algorithms today are marvellous and very effective.
So what about news? The social media pages call it 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.
Not unless you 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 it 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 in a way. 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.
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.
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.
And 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.
So for most people social media is NOT a good place to get news but sadly you need to TRAIN your social media dragon to fetch you what you want to see and not ever fetch you news.
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
CONTACT ME VIA PM OR ON FACEBOOK OR EMAIL
If you need to talk to me about something it is often far better to do so via private / direct messaging because Quora often fails to notify me of comment replies.
You can Direct Message my profile (then More >> messages). Or better, email me at support@robertinventor.com
Or best of all Direct Message me on Facebook if you are okay joining Facebook. My Facebook profile is here:. Robert Walker I usually get Facebook messages much faster than on the other platforms as I spend most of my day there.
FOR MORE HELP
To find a debunk see: List of articles in my Debunking Doomsday blog to date See also my Short debunks
Scared and want a story debunked? Post to our Facebook group. Please look over the group rules before posting or commenting as they help the group to run smoothly
Facebook group Doomsday Debunked
Also do join our facebook group if you can help with fact checking or to help scared people who are panicking.
SEARCH LIST OF DEBUNKS
You can search by title and there’s also an option to search the content of the blog using a google search.
CLICK HERE TO SEARCH: List of articles in my Debunking Doomsday blog to date
NEW SHORT DEBUNKS
I do many more fact checks and debunks on our facebook group than I could ever write up as blog posts. They are shorter and less polished but there is a good chance you may find a short debunk for some recent concern.
See Latest short debunks for new short debunks
I also do tweets about them. I also tweet the debunks and short debunks to my Blue Sky page here:
Then on the Doomsday Debunked wiki, see my Short Debunks page which is a single page of all the earlier short debunks in one page.
I do the short debunks more often but they are less polished - they are copies of my longer replies to scared people in the Facebook group.rough Ukraine and will do so no matter what its allies do to support Ukraine.