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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

(www.scientificamerican.com)
757 points headalgorithm | 1 comments | 05 Feb 25 14:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.339s | source
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yowayb ◴[05 Feb 25 15:22 UTC] No.42949712[source]▶
Those of us in the west tend to forget that much of what we see is a form of propaganda, whether by governments or businesses, or even a large number of people. When you keep this in mind, everything you see becomes an opinion and your mind can comfortably (or at least not emotionally/hurriedly) form your own opinion over time.
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crispyambulance ◴[05 Feb 25 15:53 UTC] No.42950292[source]▶
I had used ublock-origin on youtube to disable the right-hand sidebar of "recommended" videos so that I could just view the stuff in my subscriptions. A couple of years ago, they started detecting and blocking ublock-origin, so I stopped using it (ublock).

It's not really the ads that bother me. It's the "recommended videos". Is there a way to customize my view of youtube to avoid the shit I don't need to see?

The thing about youtube is that it's very easy for propaganda/click-bait to creep in during moments of weakness.

Maybe it's time to go cold-turkey? Failing that, maybe it's worth it to try and take some control over the experience?

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1. godshatter ◴[05 Feb 25 21:55 UTC] No.42955802[source]▶
I go to extremes compared to most others, but I log into YT with a browser profile where history is not kept and don't log in. The front page is basically empty. I have a local web page with links to creators whose content I enjoy. I check out one of my favorite creators and see what new videos they have to offer. The benefit of this is that the first few rounds of recommendations are actually mildly useful since the algorithm knows nothing about you and you haven't showed it much for it to use since I'm usually logging in through a vpn.

It's crazy that the best experience (for me, anyway) is achieved by giving it the least amount of information possible.