Why did threads show people certain stuff?
Shower Thoughts@kbin.social – 0 points – The Fediverse isn't very big. Overall there's a few million users which is more people than I know, but as many people as a big city rather than as many people as a big country.
Despite not being very large, I can fairly easily hang out with people I'm cool with.
I mean, sometimes I'll see something that pisses me off, but I subscribe to people and communities I like, and I don't subscribe or unsubscribe to people and communities I don't like, and so even if someone I am cool with shares something I'm not cool with, I just keep scrolling.
There's a space for everyone. There's far left spaces, and there's far right spaces. There's religious spaces and atheist spaces. There's horny spaces and there's non horny spaces. There's authoritarian spaces and libertarian spaces.
Despite all those different types of people in all kinds of spaces, it seems like for the most other people get to see what they want to see too. Yeah, there's defederation I guess, but overall it seems like the people who want to see the fediverse as a left wing utopia can believe that it is, and the people who want to see the fediverse as a right wing utopia can believe that it is, and both can be right without getting into massive clashes daily (again, for the most part, and some people really want to get into clashes)
Facebook allegedly knows all kinds of stuff about you. It knows everything about your Facebook profile. It knows everything on your Instagram profile. It tracks where you live and where you walk and who you talk to and what you say.
Threads allegedly had 100 million people in the first few days, so there's way more people than on the fediverse. There's got to be at least as many posts on at least as many topics as the fediverse.
So when I see people complaining about threads being super far right or super far left, I'm sitting there puzzled. Why is Meta showing you posts you'll hate?
I mean, I'm pretty sure they intentionally trigger fights between people who disagree like the Jerry Springer Show, but it just seems really strange that they'd almost mathematically pick stuff that seemed to be meant to turn off people from the platform.
Maybe it's just a tremendous miscalculation somewhere?
They want engagement, not for users to like stuff. And when someone sees something that makes their blood boil, apparently they’re more likely to engage.
Btw, here’s a fun short story that’s somewhat relevant here (it’s more interesting if you first read it without knowing, but for the sake of clarity — it’s fiction)