Social media divides us, makes us more extreme and less empathetic, it riles us up or sucks us into doom scrolling, making us stressed and depressed. It feels like we need to touch grass and escape to the real world.
New research shows that we might have largely misinterpreted why this is the case. It turns out that the social media internet may uniquely undermine the way our brains work but not in the way you think.
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I mean, I have a BS and MS in computer science, so you can use that as guidance as to whether or not I know what an algorithm is. :)
In this context, though, it should be clear that “The Algorithm” refers to a specific social networking algorithm that chooses the content you see in order to maximize advertising revenue.
So yes, Lemmy has algorithms that show different content based on your input, but that’s a wildly different animal. Notably, I’m the one deciding, and also they’re not trying to maximize ad revenue.