Newsletter #1: Side-stepping the social media algorithm
I recently watched this video by Ali Abdaal, in which he explains how starting a newsletter can help to get into the world of creating content on the internet. I agree and I feel as we consume stuff on the internet, it is important to do something substantial with it like creating a video or writing a book, or creating a course, otherwise, consumption becomes a passive activity because we eventually forget whatever we have read or seen. So I have decided to be a bit more regular with this newsletter.
I am reading the book Originals by Adam Grant in which he talks about how original ideas are generated, how we can have our own original ideas, and how we can sell our idea even if it disturbs the status quo.
In the book this is one of the conclusions that he drew based on his research, which I found interesting:
“The more strongly you identify with an extreme group, the harder you seek to differentiate yourself from more moderate groups that threaten your values.”
Albeit he talks about this in the context of an idea being so extreme that it breaks the status quo instead of pushing it, I felt this was especially relevant with respect to social media.
Social media algorithms work on basis of engagement. This means if you seem to connect to or interact with a particular type of content, the algorithm will then fill your feed with similar content. The second part, and the one which I feel is the dangerous one, is that since the most engagement is received on the most extreme views most of the time, it is likely that given a particularly contentious issue, whichever side you tend on, the algorithm will push you completely over the edge towards that side. Thus gradually making your views more extreme.
I was trying to come up with a visualization for this, and this is what I came up with:
Consider a ball that is half red and half blue (Completely random colours :P), initially, the ball is shown to you as shown in picture 1 below.
Now if you seem to like the red side more, the algorithm implicitly starts turning the ball, and eventually, you don’t see the blue side at all. If you are unaware of how the algorithm works, it is likely that eventually you will get pulled so far towards the red side that the blue side seems absolutely ridiculous and vice-versa. And it follows that when one individual from the red side and one individual from the blue side meet in let’s say the comments section, things will get heated.
So how to get out of this spiral?
Well, I think the first step is simply to be aware that the view or the content that you like, might have another side or more than one side that other people subscribe to and like, and the second one, try to seek out the other point of view actively. For example, if you feel that improving reading speed is a good thing, try to look for blogs and videos which explain why reading speed doesn’t matter. You will be surprised to see that both “How to improve your reading speed” and “Reading speed doesn’t matter” both have similar views and likes and shares.
Another trick I use, specifically for Twitter, is setting the feed to the latest tweets instead of home. This will remove recommended tweets from your feed and only show tweets from people you follow. Instagram has also recently releases this feature.
That’s it for this issue. I hope you found this article interesting. Until next time!
PS: At the end of every newsletter, I have also decided to share a podcast or an article I found interesting. This will maybe give you a potentially interesting piece of content and keep me consistent with my reading habit :)
As a recent graduate and someone who is just starting to earn and invest, I found this article super useful. It explains the working of the stock market from first principles.
Here’s a podcast on how social media is affecting our minds and attention spans.
Originally published at https://prathmesh6.substack.com on August 11, 2022.
