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Ashley

Dumb algorithms

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Algorithms are great and important and helping the world and blah blah blah...but sometimes they're dumb as fuck.

Case in point the Google News Feed (Google Discover or whatever they're calling it now) shows stories you're supposed to be interest in but I keep telling it so many things I'm not interested in that it's getting desperate. Quite often it will throw up random stories from local newspapers (not local to me). Or I will read one story and then it decides I want to see that same story from a dozen different places.

Just thought we could complain/eye roll about some of the stupid tech stuff.

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One thing that always annoys me is that if I'm looking to buy something, it pops up in advertisements. Even after having bought that product, it keeps popping up in an advertisement. There should be a "I've already bought this, get it out of my feed" button.

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Twitter's the worst. You tell it your not interested in a trending topic and it reappears when you refresh despite it telling you that's what you need to do. Also I have no idea where it's getting the suggested topics from. They're somewhat relative but way off, for instance it think I want to see Persona related tweets for some reason.

At one point youtube didn't know what to show me so it started showing me random stuff you normally get shown if you're not logged in.

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Ads have started appearing in Google Maps on iPhone now. You ask for public transport directions and the top result includes a taxi trip with some Uber competitor. :angry:

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56 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

Ads have started appearing in Google Maps on iPhone now. You ask for public transport directions and the top result includes a taxi trip with some Uber competitor. :angry:

FWIW I find CittyMapper to be much more useful for public transport than Google Maps. Might be worth checking out if you haven't.

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22 hours ago, Vileplume2000 said:

One thing that always annoys me is that if I'm looking to buy something, it pops up in advertisements. Even after having bought that product, it keeps popping up in an advertisement. There should be a "I've already bought this, get it out of my feed" button.

This is true. However, I'm also glad that the algorithms do not know that I've actually bought the product as that would imply that it reads emails (but a button for telling it so would be alright, I guess).

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17 minutes ago, MindFreak said:

This is true. However, I'm also glad that the algorithms do not know that I've actually bought the product as that would imply that it reads emails (but a button for telling it so would be alright, I guess).

It's not my area of expertise but as far as I'm aware it's setting a cookie when you look at a product. Surely the checkout process can then remove that cookie?

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2 minutes ago, Ashley said:

It's not my area of expertise but as far as I'm aware it's setting a cookie when you look at a product. Surely the checkout process can then remove that cookie?

I'm unsure if it's possible for cookie monsters to actually delete stuff from you computer? I think that's the reason it's not already happening.

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3 minutes ago, MindFreak said:

I'm unsure if it's possible for cookie monsters to actually delete stuff from you computer? I think that's the reason it's not already happening.

You absolutely can delete cookies via JavaScript. Just most places don't. 

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47 minutes ago, MindFreak said:

I just gather that if it's easy and/or possible, it would already be happening.

I like your optimism! 

I'm going to assume they don't because they sell the data to advertising companies and it doesn't matter to them (the shop) if you continue to see adverts for it after buying it so they wouldn't reduce the data set they sell. 

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On 11/10/2021 at 1:17 PM, Ike said:

Twitter's the worst. You tell it your not interested in a trending topic and it reappears when you refresh despite it telling you that's what you need to do. Also I have no idea where it's getting the suggested topics from. They're somewhat relative but way off, for instance it think I want to see Persona related tweets for some reason.

At one point youtube didn't know what to show me so it started showing me random stuff you normally get shown if you're not logged in.

Twitter is awful! I love the music of Hideki Naganuma but his online presence is annoying to say the least, so I unfollowed him. A few days later I see his tweets again under the topic SEGA so I unfollow (especially because I actually like sega and the topic seems focused on their constant mishaps lol), then he appears again under another suggested topic 'Sonic the Hedgehog', then again days later under the even more vague 'videogames' topic. Just fuck off and let me read my followers only, Twitter!

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Also YouTube has fully given up on me, it only ever suggests videos I have seen before. If I didn't actively search for new things I'd be stuck in a constant loop. Then again it is 2021 and I find myself playing a Super Monkey Ball 1 & 2 collection and Sonic Colours Ultimate so maybe I'm just that predictable. 

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I find switching to Latest Tweets helps keep your timeline on track. If you switch the normal version it'll show a million things you don't care about.

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14 minutes ago, Josh64 said:

Twitter is awful! I love the music of Hideki Naganuma but his online presence is annoying to say the least, so I unfollowed him. A few days later I see his tweets again under the topic SEGA so I unfollow (especially because I actually like sega and the topic seems focused on their constant mishaps lol), then he appears again under another suggested topic 'Sonic the Hedgehog', then again days later under the even more vague 'videogames' topic. Just fuck off and let me read my followers only, Twitter!

Currently trying this out to see if it helps things: https://www.neowin.net/news/turn-off-topic-suggestions-and-interests-at-twitter-with-this-handy-script/

Although doing so it listed Animation in my interests three times which is just silly.

You can also add these as muted words to stop some of Twitter's more needy behaviour:

Quote

RankedOrganicTweet 
ActivityTweet
suggest_ranked_organic_tweet
suggest_sc_tweet 
suggest_ranked_timeline_tweet
suggest_grouped_tweet_hashtag
suggest_pyle_tweet
suggest_recycled_tweet_inline
suggest_activity_tweet 
suggest_recycled_tweet
suggest_activity
suggest_recap 
suggest_who_to_follow
generic_activity_Highlights 

 

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I've found that if you have your feed set up to "latest first", you seem to see less of their algorithm nonsense.

 

I've also changed my trending location to Japan so I can't read any of them. Trending topics are just something to spread further hate, harassment, false news and to create an atmosphere of perpetual arguments.

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23 hours ago, Ashley said:

Looking again because it does said to periodically rerun it. Since removing all interests yesterdays it has added (back?) the following:

  • European travel
  • Famous families (lol what)
  • Oats

I tweeted about oats on Sunday (exciting right) which seems to show it will constantly look back on tweets to add to it rather than just relying on new tweets. Not exactly surprising but hey ho.

Sadly for Twitter I'm not on there looking for the latest oat discourse though.

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I've got a load of stuff I've never heard of, some games/shows I've never seen or played, a random manga, and some sports things like "Scottish Premier", "NBA Basketball" and some specific North American baseball/football teams like "New York City FC" and "Vancouver Titans". 

 

Although it does have Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. five times, which I can understand (well, except that one of them is Spanish). 

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9 minutes ago, Cube said:

I've got a load of stuff I've never heard of, some games/shows I've never seen or played, a random manga, and some sports things like "Scottish Premier", "NBA Basketball" and some specific North American baseball/football teams like "New York City FC" and "Vancouver Titans". 

 

Although it does have Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. five times, which I can understand (well, except that one of them is Spanish). 

Yeah some of it is clearly them overlapping with other people with similar interests. Like What We Do in the Shadows is on mine and I've never seen it and I certainly can't imagine I've tweeted about it, but do tweet about TV and follow some TV-focused accounts.

Also got Video Games, Video Games and Video games. Seems Twitter has firmly decided it does not need a space.

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Now I'm just moaning but that Google News thing has suddenly decided I want to see two dozen articles about the new Shazam footage. It's bloody annoying. 

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The one that has historically caused me most frustration is YouTube's recommendations, I'll clean it up and say I don't want to see certain things but then a couple months later the trash will start to leak in again and I'll have to purge the recommendations all over again. 

Currently though I hate the shuffle function on YouTube music, I often end up with several songs in a row by the same artist, it's like it barely shuffles the deck at all. 

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Youtube decided to recommend me a 5 year old "Smash For Wii U" video that's just Bayonetta down-smashing (that is stepping) on a low-health Mii. This Mii apparently represents a friend of the uploader, and his username is... "Switch", of all things. The video is called "Switch's Dream", and it was apparently meant to be a private joke between the two of them, until it was randomly recommended to a lot of people today.

...

What the fuck, Youtube?

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1 hour ago, Jonnas said:

Youtube decided to recommend me a 5 year old "Smash For Wii U" video that's just Bayonetta down-smashing (that is stepping) on a low-health Mii. This Mii apparently represents a friend of the uploader, and his username is... "Switch", of all things. The video is called "Switch's Dream", and it was apparently meant to be a private joke between the two of them, until it was randomly recommended to a lot of people today.

...

What the fuck, Youtube?

I wonder if that's tied into the five year anniversary of the Switch reveal and either they're trying to promote switch stuff or people have been looking because of it and then it drives up "Switch" videos. 

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50 minutes ago, Ashley said:

I wonder if that's tied into the five year anniversary of the Switch reveal and either they're trying to promote switch stuff or people have been looking because of it and then it drives up "Switch" videos. 

Yeah, it's probably a combo of Smash Bros, Bayonetta (Bayo 3 videos must be hot right now), the word "Switch" being in the title, and the tendency to recommend super short, snappy videos.

But that video had to have less than, like, 50 views before the algorithm exploded it. This is like if a random years old video of a random joe shooting the shit with mates was suddenly paraded before thousands and thousands of people. That's basically what this was.

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