Psychologists Examine Downside of Social Media Algorithms
news.utdallas.edu
By Stephen Fontenot  | While social media algorithms have become excellent at matching a user’s viewing habits with targeted, personalized content, psychologists at The University of Texas at Dallas have determined that these algorithms may have a negative influence on a user’s mental health. Dr. Alva Tang, assistant professor of psychology in the School of Behavioral […]
  • undrwater@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    7 days ago

    Does lemmy do the whole algorithm thing? I don’t think so, but I could be wrong.

    Algorithmic social media is pretty much what we’re talking about, I’m sure.

    • poopkins@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      5 days ago

      Of course it has an algorithm, but I think you’re referring to an algorithm that includes personalized or demographic parameters.

      Regardless of whether the algorithm includes that (or rather, to which degree), let’s not forget that bad actors can use the knowledge of the open source algorithm to identify the optimal way to manipulate the platform to bring their content on top.

      • undrwater@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        4 days ago

        Fair. Have you seen an example of this?

        In my limited imagination, bots that flood a topic has a tendency to do that. The the “ask reddit” bots I see in “All”.

        • poopkins@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 day ago

          Yes, browse https://lemmy.ml/c/memes.

          The entire community is run by Russian trolls who take the following approach:

          • Engage with anybody even remotely critical of the extremely pro-Russian posts, under the guise of being “modern-day communists”
          • Parrot and inflate anything that resembles far-right movements in Ukraine
          • Repeat all the Russian propaganda, such as describing the Ukrainian government as fascist
          • Misconstrue comments and incorrectly extract quotes
          • As mods, selectively delete comments to create a one-sided, pro-Russian narrative
          • Gang up with all their troll accounts onto a comment they deleted, chiming in with “wow, fascist” to make the casual observer believe that message must have been awful and they are the good guys