alt Hacker NewsI can’t reject this line of thought strongly enough.
The vast majority of signal is from a plurality of opinions, and the outcome is an average of those inputs, usually tweaked a bit to make them more addictive.
Your thought that “the algorithm doesn’t serve me personally because I have exceptional taste” is not a unique observation. Everyone who consumes these systems has the same thoughts. Everyone is a rounding error, whether you’re in a knitting community, or you’re a worlds leading expert in deep learning.
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> Everyone who consumes these systems has the same thoughts.
Do they?
From what I can tell most people using these apps seem pretty fine with having their algorithm determine everything they consume. You must remember, a majority of US teenagers went out of their way to download TikTok, before short-form content was forced into the existing platforms.
I think we can boil this down to a single question: If tomorrow, YouTube offered a toggle to all users to completely remove shorts from every feed in the app, what would most people do?
I think many here on HN would immediately choose to disable shorts. But what about the majority? Would they disable?
I think the answer is so obviously no. Despite all the disdain and regard for short form content as slop by the mainstream themselves.
I think your viewpoint is the correct default opinion to have. It prevents belittling thy neighbor & delusions of grandeur. But at a certain point you have to drop the optimism. These platforms do work for the masses. Unfortunately.
When everyone is unique, nobody is?
> has the same thoughts
Only, some people consume what is objectively trash, and others recognize what is objectively of value. The Paretian distribution is real and observable.