From Pine View Farm

It’s All about the Algorithm 0

At Psychology Today Blogs, Amanda L. Giordano explores ten techniques that “social” media companies (remember, they are companies who desiring profits from our “engagement”) use to keep us “engaged.” Here’s what she says about the algorithm:

Personalization of content via algorithms: Social media platforms have been transparent about their collection of users’ data (just visit the terms of the site). They collect information about what we click on, how long we view a post, who we message, what groups we join, and even information from other websites that have connections to the social media platform. Once the data is collected, algorithms are employed to customize users’ experiences to match their preferences (Montag, et al., 2019). We are much more drawn to apps in which everything interests us—and the personalization of content, newsfeeds, videos, pictures, stories, reels, and recommendations keeps users engaged for longer durations of time.

Follow the link for the other nine items she identifies.

Aside:

I would argue that, in most cases, there’s nothing “transparent” about the “terms of service.” They are often, purposefully in my opinion, dense piles of impenetrable legalese designed to discourage persons from reading them all the way through.

The one exception in my experience is Google, whose terms are written in generally plain language. Yet persons, including on occasion myself, use them anyway.

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