Privacy experts: what's the easiest way to experience what Instagram is feeding others?

wowwoweowza@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 16 points –

Not exactly sure how to articulate this.

My instagram shorts feed feels completely Sci-Fi level manipulative and conditioning.

And I realize that in some ways, I have programmed it.

So it makes me wonder how others are programming and getting programmed by these super manipulative video feeds.

Short of walking up to strangers and asking, “hey, can I compare your feed to mine?” What can someone do to get a more Birds Eye view of what this cancerous infection instagram is doing to society?

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Sounds like a fun community to kick off /C/curatedfeeds or something where you can say I searched for X on platform Y and got this. What did you lot get.

*Disclaimer: not being facetious

You don't need to involve technology to know what manipulative info people are gobbling up. Just watch the public. What they do. What they talk about.

Often, they will unanimously begin discussing the same topic(s) in the flesh all of a sudden. This is how you know it is not an organic process. They did not arrive at that thought through lived experience, but by what they'd seen on a screen.

It is nothing new. The 'feeds' in question were once formerly television.

*Disclaimer #2: This may only really work if you, yourself are sufficiently unplugged from manipulative feed-based media.

This must be why I have no clue wtf people are talking about 99% of the time and checkout on most conversations.

I like your use of "sufficiently unplugged", as we're all plugged in, to varying degrees.

I’m likely not unplugged enough to “grok” this entirely.

But the reminder to completely unplug is valuable. Thank you.

What the OP said is funny and interesting, but the cool calculation is just talk to people IRL and ask them about instagram and what on earth

Short of walking up to strangers and asking, “hey, can I compare your feed to mine?"

You can create your own alternative accounts....

So… wouldn’t I have to have an extra phone or device?

I’m pretty certain that even if I were to delete insta on my phone and reinstall it, there’s going to be traces of my previous use? My identity?

Not who you’re replying to, but definitely. I manage several Instagram accounts that aren’t my personal accounts and the algorithm feeds me things I’d expect in my personal while I’m in one of the others. One of them I’m only logged into so it’s not as much, but the other is attached to me more because I created it, I guess, and even though I’ve curated a much different following list, and do entirely different things on that account, it still shows me more personal things.