Armed with a burner phone and a fake name, I set out to learn how Instagram’s algorithm really works. This is what happened next.

This is a key reason behind my discomfort with social media. The algorithms that seem unresponsive to clear signals of intent was the last straw. Ended up leaving YouTube over the incessant push to new channels and ragebait shit.

Anyway, lemmy might be a cesspit at times, but its a cesspit I can choose/not choose, to engage with, and thats some nice anti-monopolisation of my online experience in the design.

  • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    I checked my phone’s location settings, and sure enough, Instagram had recently accessed this information.

    The average tech-illiterate journo is always going to be dogshit at these “experiments” because they don’t understand how most of the underlying tech works.

    Other additions to my feed were harder to explain. … One video featured a woman in a sari frying up South Indian dumplings called kuzhi paniyaram — an obscure dish my mum would make when I was growing up.

    Yes, numbnuts. Your precise location, plus a hundred other data points you’re ignorant of, associated the account with your mum. This journo probably doesn’t even know that location access likely means visibility of all the wifi and bluetooth devices in your radius.

    If this is late stage cap journalism, in the age of omnipresent surveillance capitalism, it’s time to pack it in. We’re well and truly cooked. Welcome to costco, I love you!