#algorithmic literacy

[bogkeep]

for my fellow fans of longform video essays about media you may or may not be familiar with. i just watched laura crone's new video that's four and a half hours long and it's mostly about a book + tv series called the magicians, but ALSO the advertising/recommendation culture around books, and i really enjoyed it. i think i especially enjoyed it because i have been craving some Deep Thinks about like, what people criticize about booktok but without making it "it's uhhhh it's bad to only read bad books!" and i found this video both refreshing and insightful. i will give a CW for mentions of That One Wizard School Series, including in the title. just so you don't get jumpscared

[inappropriate-aunt]

I think tumblr users need to teach tiktok users about blocking.

You can block companies, celebrities, politicians- all kinds of accounts. It's just a little hidden because it's on their profile under the SHARE BUTTON of all things.

Step by step guide with screenshots for reference:

Click to get to their profile

Click the share button

Block their dumbass

As you can see, this is also where you report them.

Why bother to block? Easy- it limits their audience. See a conservative dude spouting nonsense about women? Block his ass. You'll still get to see the stitches and their videos get less exposure on the app. The more people who block them, the less the algorithm can suggest them, and gradually they lose sponsors. Scrolling away isn't enough. Starve them.

[critical-skeptic]

The AI Bait Farm: Social Media’s Death Spiral Toward a “Dead Internet”

Social media, once hailed as the digital agora—a global forum for connection, community, and expression—is now collapsing under its own weight. What we’re seeing isn’t just the rise of engagement bait or low-effort content farming; we’re witnessing the systematic erosion of authenticity, creativity, and relevance in real time. A plague of AI-generated imagery, emotionally manipulative captions, and algorithmic engagement farming has turned platforms like Facebook into breeding grounds for digital junk food: empty calories designed to elicit clicks, not meaningful interaction.

It’s tempting to dismiss these posts as benign annoyances, but that would underestimate the scale of the problem. These aren’t isolated gimmicks but symptoms of a much larger trend that risks accelerating the so-called “Dead Internet Theory.” And while this theory may sound like dystopian hyperbole, the patterns emerging are impossible to ignore.

What’s Happening Right Now?

Scroll any social media feed, and you’ll encounter the same formulaic garbage on repeat:

Emotionally Charged AI-Generated Content: Glamorous “old��� women, impossibly muscular veterans, or attractive models in bizarrely curated patriotic or religious contexts. These images aren’t just unrealistic—they’re uncanny, almost dreamlike, betraying their machine-made origins. The posts are paired with captions like “God bless veterans 🇺🇸,” or “My husband just called me fat… Should I leave him?”—phrases designed to spark outrage or sympathy and lure you into engaging.

Engagement Loops: The visible caption is always vague or incomplete, forcing curiosity-clicks. Comments are flooded with spam or scam accounts promoting phishing links, further eroding trust and degrading the space.

Virality via Exploitation: These posts prey on universal human emotions—empathy, nationalism, anger, or intrigue. But their purpose isn’t to inspire or connect; it’s to hijack your attention, feeding the algorithmic gods who reward viral reach with ad revenue or data exploitation.

Proliferation of Bots and Bad Actors: Many of these accounts are entirely fake—AI-created personas operated by bot farms or individuals running automated content machines. Their purpose isn’t just engagement; it’s often outright malicious, funneling traffic to scams or phishing attempts.

The Connection to “Dead Internet Theory”

The Dead Internet Theory suggests that much of the content we interact with online is no longer produced by humans but by bots, algorithms, and automated systems. According to this idea, the internet as we know it is no longer a thriving ecosystem of organic human activity but an elaborate facade—an echo chamber of fake engagement designed to sustain platforms financially.

Here’s why this matters: platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are beginning to resemble the early symptoms of Dead Internet Theory in action. Just as spam and bots overtook chatrooms like Yahoo Messenger in the late 2000s, social media is now becoming a wasteland of fake interactions, auto-generated content, and meaningless noise. Back then, the spam crisis killed platforms overnight as users fled the sinking ship. Today, social media is far too entrenched in our lives to collapse outright—but it’s showing signs of terminal decay.

Why This Matters

Proliferation is Exploding: AI tools have made it absurdly easy to generate realistic images, plausible captions, and entire fake personas. What used to require a skilled designer or content creator can now be achieved by anyone with access to free tools. This democratization of fakery is flooding the internet at a scale unimaginable even five years ago.

Authenticity is Losing the War: Social media’s original value was its ability to connect real people and foster genuine conversations. When most of what you see is fake, the ability to trust anything erodes. Even legitimate content creators are overshadowed by bots churning out endless garbage.

Runaway Algorithmic Incentives: Platforms profit from engagement, no matter how low-quality it is. Every click on an AI-generated post boosts ad revenue and data collection. In a perverse way, platforms have no incentive to fix this problem because the garbage works. It keeps users scrolling and interacting, even if that interaction is meaningless.

Psychological Exhaustion: Fake content exploits human emotions, but the constant bombardment of manipulative bait is exhausting. Users disengage not just from the fake posts but from the platform itself. This creates a vicious cycle: as genuine users leave, bots and bad actors fill the void.

The Parallel to Chatroom Collapse: Yahoo Chat and similar platforms died when spam and bots overwhelmed the system. Users fled because the signal-to-noise ratio became unbearable. Social media risks the same fate—but on a global scale.

Where This Leads: The Dead Internet in Action

If unchecked, this runaway trend has clear consequences:

A Content Wasteland: As fake posts dominate feeds, genuine voices will be drowned out. Social media will lose its relevance as a platform for real interaction.

Hyper-Skepticism: As more content is exposed as fake, users will begin questioning everything—even legitimate posts. This erosion of trust has broader implications for how we engage with the internet as a whole.

Collapse of Platforms: While platforms like Facebook might be too big to fail outright, they risk becoming relics of a bygone era, replaced by smaller, niche platforms that prioritize authenticity (or so we hope).

What Can Be Done?

Demand Better Algorithms: Platforms need to prioritize authenticity over engagement, even at the cost of ad revenue. This means investing in better moderation tools to weed out bots and spam, rather than rewarding it.

Raise Awareness: Most users don’t realize how prolific and fake much of their feed is. Calling it out—not just with comments but through larger discussions—can help push the issue into the spotlight.

Support Genuine Content: Follow and engage with real creators, especially those calling out or exposing these trends. Visibility matters, and genuine content needs all the help it can get.

Educate Yourself: Learn to spot fake content. Look for subtle tells: overly smooth skin, incoherent details (like garbled name tags), or too-perfect lighting. The more you recognize these patterns, the less likely you are to fall for the bait.

Final Thoughts: A Warning Shot

Social media is heading down the same path as the chatrooms of old: a slow, suffocating decline into irrelevance. But unlike Yahoo Chat, which we abandoned without much consequence, social media is woven into the fabric of our lives. If it collapses—or worse, becomes an entirely “dead” internet of bots and fake engagement—the consequences for society are far-reaching.

What’s happening now isn’t inevitable, but it is accelerating. And unless platforms, users, and creators fight back against the onslaught of AI spam and engagement farming, we’ll find ourselves living in a digital wasteland, endlessly scrolling through meaningless noise. The time to act is now—before the last vestiges of authenticity are buried under a pile of algorithmic garbage.

[sigmastolen]

"companies betting that people will use chatbots rather than search engines to navigate the web" i should not engage with news when i'm trying to go to bed but i'm so angry/alarmed/disgusted at the idea of just passively ceding* our human judgment and ability to evaluate information and sources and, idk, the beautiful serendipity of having our interest sparked or our questions answered by something further down the list or otherwise out-of-the-way -- just giving all that up to a questionably-trained machine making unaccountable decisions in a black box and feeding us information that (as we have recently seen) may not even be true (insert arthur-internet-lies.gif here or whatever), because it's ~less effort~

[schrodingers--slut]

i am drowning in babes they love me for my ability to repeated fail captchas... "haha which squares DO contain a motorcycle?? evidently not the ones i picked!"

[dev-g-wisdom]

Natural Stupidity and Artificial Intelligence

"The two greatest challenges our world faces today are Natural Stupidity and Artificial Intelligence. Both continue to evolve. The former has gained celebrity status through social media reels, while the latter not only supports but also amplifies it, constantly creating new ways to do so every day."

In a world driven by rapid technological advancements and digital connectivity, this statement rings truer than ever. It encapsulates the irony of our times: the parallel evolution of human folly and artificial brilliance, each feeding off the other in an endless loop. Let’s dive deeper into this intriguing observation.

Natural Stupidity: Celebrity of the Digital Age

Natural stupidity refers to the irrational, uninformed, or impulsive behaviors that humans exhibit. Social media platforms, particularly reels and viral videos, have become breeding grounds for such behavior. Whether it’s reckless stunts, shallow trends, or outright misinformation, this content often garners the most attention.

The algorithms favor engagement over substance, rewarding extreme, bizarre, or sensational posts. Consequently, many individuals chase fleeting internet fame, often at the cost of reason or dignity. This phenomenon has elevated “natural stupidity” to the status of an online celebrity—watched, shared, and celebrated globally.

Artificial Intelligence: Enabler or Amplifier?

AI, a revolutionary force in modern technology, paradoxically plays a significant role in promoting this trend. By curating personalized feeds, optimizing content delivery, and suggesting new trends, AI tools prioritize what captivates users—often reinforcing the very behaviors we should question.

For example:

Algorithms push viral content, regardless of its quality or implications.

AI-driven editing tools make it easier to create visually appealing but superficial content.

Deepfakes and automated systems enable misinformation to spread at an alarming pace.

While AI is designed to make life more efficient and informed, its misuse often ends up magnifying human errors or tendencies.

The Feedback Loop of Irony

The relationship between natural stupidity and artificial intelligence forms a self-sustaining feedback loop:

1. Humans create and share content, sometimes rooted in ignorance or recklessness.

2. AI algorithms amplify this content for its viral potential.

3. The cycle repeats as more people emulate these trends for visibility.

This loop highlights the unintended consequences of technological innovation. What was meant to empower human intelligence often ends up supporting its opposite.

The Way Forward

This observation isn’t just a critique but a wake-up call. The challenge lies not in the existence of AI or human folly but in how we choose to use and regulate these forces. A few steps to break the cycle include:

Redefining Content Algorithms: Social media platforms must prioritize meaningful, educational, or creative content over sensationalism.

Digital Literacy Education: Teaching individuals to critically evaluate online content can curb the spread of misinformation and poor behavior.

Ethical AI Development: Developers must anticipate the social impact of AI and build systems that promote responsible use.

Conclusion

Natural stupidity and artificial intelligence, though vastly different in nature, have intertwined to shape the modern digital landscape. Their coexistence presents a unique challenge: to harness the potential of AI without succumbing to the pitfalls of human folly. By recognizing and addressing this dynamic, we can aim for a world where intelligence—both natural and artificial—is used constructively.

As technology continues to evolve, the choice between amplifying wisdom or foolishness ultimately lies with us.

[rphazarika]

Mobile Phones and Children: The Hidden Dangers of Digital Addiction and Data Manipulation

Explore how smartphone use and exposure to emotionally charged content can impact children's mental health, leading to anxiety and depression. Learn about the role of AI algorithms and get tips for fostering healthier digital habits for our kids.

In today’s digital world, mobile phones are more than just tools—they have become an integral part of everyday life, especially for children and adolescents. While these devices offer numerous benefits, such as entertainment, education and social connectivity, there is a darker side to their pervasive presence. Beyond visible impacts like mobile phone addiction, there is an unseen influence from…

[lifesutrasket]

10 Simple Ways to Stop Fake News

In today’s digital age and the era where social media rules the world, misinformation is a growing concern that affects us all.  With the vast amount of information available at our fingertips, how can we discern what is true from what is false?  How do we protect ourselves and our communities from the spread of false information? In this Fake News article, we will explore 10 ideas to reduce…

[a-sassy-bench]

Algorithms

Social media needs engagement to make money. Anger generates more engagement than anything. Think about when you see some ludicrous claim and you get all frustrated and want to correct them and if you do it starts a heated back and forth. That is social media's bread and butter.

"The more incendiary the material, the more it keeps users engaged, the more it is boosted by the algorithm."

It is in a social media company's best interest to boost the most inflammatory content in its algorithm to get people heated and keep them online. When you interact with content, the algorithm starts automatically pushing you more content related to that. Maybe you see someone say something about vaccines and you watch it because it's something you don't know about or because you just need to know what ridiculous thing they are saying. Once you do that, it will start suggesting more content like that to you and it's easy to fall into a hole where the content it suggests gets farther and farther to the right.

From the same article linked above: "When an internal Facebook experiment created a fake account for a fictional user – “Carol Smith,” a 41-year old conservative mother from North Carolina – this account was recommended pages and groups related to QAnon within days of its creation. “Carol” was recommended an account associated with the militia group Three Percenters within three weeks."

But it isn't limited to only your activity.

"Platforms like Facebook use complex algorithms to target ads based on social connections. The Meta Pixel tracks user behavior across different sites and can influence ad recommendations for connected friends. For example, you like a post about hiking gear on Facebook, and your friend, who is connected to you, starts seeing ads for similar hiking equipment even though they haven't shown interest in hiking."

I don't have a link for this, but it's obvious to me your IP address plays a part, as well. When my best friend came to visit, all of a sudden all of my ads were for bras. I never get those ads because I stopped buying bras when the pandemic hit and I never looked back. My best friend had just been looking for bras and I was getting ads for the places they were just shopping at now that they were on my wifi. And i couldn't help but notice that YouTube started suggesting I watch a bunch of videos I had never shown interest in, but were made by people my friend followed.

So the algorithm is built to radicalize, our schools focus more on testing and less on things like media literacy, and if you're someone who didn't have a great education you will consume the media without scrutiny and continue to be fed more of that media in ever increasingly problematic ways. Or perhaps you are an unaware young adult/child and you live in a home with conservative parents so the algorithm shows you media that your parents engage in on that same IP address and you fall down the same rabbit hole. Either way it's all the same and we're all being eaten alive by the algorithm.

.

[the-mind-of-a-dinosaur]

Something about this feels dystopian

By dystopian, I mean the idea that media literacy is struggling to catch up to a lot of folks because the platforms change and algorithms make things easier is terrifying. It's cool that people can band together to make things like this but my skepticism is high with everything.

This seems good, almost too good. It makes me wonder who might be the target for this. Maybe older folks? Or maybe those who read news on their computer and phones?

[erinthesails]

I have to say, the unfortunate thing about classrooms that emphasize digital learning is that the Google results for any given book or story now invariably include like 40 different Prezi final projects by a college freshman, or like "Miss Samuels's 9th grade English Class Website 2021-2022". Like no offense to miss Samuels and her students but when I'm looking for analysis and discussion about a story I'm not usually looking for a source that defines vocab words at the bottom

[krissym72]

How to Determine if an Image is AI Generated?

In the ever-expanding digital landscape, the proliferation of AI-generated images has become a defining characteristic of the modern era. With algorithms wielding the power to conjure remarkably realistic visuals, the question of how to tell if an image is AI generated has taken center stage. These AI-generated images, ranging from deepfakes to computer-generated scenes, present a myriad of…

[pebblegalaxy]

Navigating the Digital Landscape: The Role of Social Media in Shaping Public Discourse and Democracy

Navigating the Digital Landscape: The Role of Social Media in Shaping Public Discourse and Democracy #SocialMedia #PublicDiscourse #Democracy #DigitalLandscape #Misinformation #DigitalLiteracy #CollectiveAction

The Role of Social Media Platforms in Shaping Public Discourse and Democracy: Navigating the Digital Landscape In the age of information overload and digital connectivity, social media platforms have emerged as powerful tools for shaping public discourse and influencing democratic processes. From Twitter to Facebook, Instagram to YouTube, these platforms serve as virtual town squares where ideas…

[jcmarchi]

The Urgent Need for GenAI Skills in Project Management

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/the-urgent-need-for-genai-skills-in-project-management/

The Urgent Need for GenAI Skills in Project Management

Getting ahead of challenges, navigating disruption, and minimizing risks—they are all integral to today’s conversations about the future of generative AI (GenAI). They are also integral to the role that project management professionals have been performing for decades.

Despite their daily familiarity with these issues, many project professionals may find themselves unprepared for how their organizations will leverage GenAI or how it will affect their jobs specifically. While no one can predict all the ways GenAI will change corporate operations and processes, there’s no doubt that this emerging technology will augment the role of many knowledge workers, including project professionals.

GenAI have a significant impact on the anatomy of project work. Given the rapid pace of GenAI’s evolution and adoption, there is a growing sense of urgency for project professionals to build AI-related skillsets—to increase productivity, efficiency, and project success.

For project managers, GenAI can perform heavy lifting across various project activities including: automated report generation, timeline updates, data analysis, cost estimations, and more. Project professionals who can harness the power of AI will ultimately free their time to focus on higher-value tasks that drive project success. As a result, it should allow them to focus more on adding new business value, developing their leadership capabilities, and driving innovation for their organizations—aligned with the goals of the enterprise.

Research shows that organizations are significantly increasing their investment in AI this year. Project professionals who stay at the forefront of the progression of emerging technologies and help drive AI adoption within their organizations will best position themselves for career success.

Developing skills, becoming AI-ready

To tap into the wealth of advantages that AI can provide, project professionals will need to prioritize upskilling. PMI research shows that only about 20% of project managers report having extensive or good practical experience with AI tools and technologies. And 49% have little to no experience with or understanding of AI in the context of project management. This is staggering when compared to the fact that 82% of senior leaders say AI will have at least some impact on how projects are run at their organization over the next five years.

Using GenAI to automate, assist and augment your project management capabilities requires new skills and a new mindset towards project work. Project professionals can use GenAI to enhance their project skills across the three core areas of the PMI Talent Triangle®: Ways of Working, Power Skills and Business Acumen.

Ways of working. This dimension focuses on adopting the best approach, practices, techniques, and tools to manage projects successfully. With the widespread availability and potential of GenAI tools at both the individual and organizational level, it is important to take advantage of the improved results that GenAI can help project managers deliver.

Think “ways of working” as a chains of events and tasks to deliver a result, where generative AI can automate, assist, or augment project management skills and competencies. Specific areas where you can leverage GenAI in this space include: project planning, time and cost management, risk management, writing and reading assistance.

Project managers should also learn about the fundamental relationship between data and AI and become familiar with their organization’s data strategy and practices. By understanding how data feeds these tools, project managers will be better positioned to understand and evaluate AI outputs. Data literacy will also enable project managers to shape the tools and models that are specific to projects — those that predict project outcomes, risks, resources, etc. — so that they are delivering the most accurate predictions and analysis to drive decision-making. This knowledge will also help project managers identify and solve for the risks that the use of GenAI can potentially introduce to the business.

Power skills. Ensuring teams have strong interpersonal skills – which we call “power skills” – allows them to maintain influence with a variety of stakeholders. This is a critical component for making change and driving successful project outcomes.

Our Pulse of the Profession Survey has identified four critical power skills that are essential to helping organizations transform and deliver sustainable results: strategic thinking, problem solving, collaborative leadership, and communication. All these are human traits that to some degree can be augmented by AI. For example, project managers can contribute more strategically to their projects and organization by applying AI tools to different aspects of their businesses, industry, and market, to solve problems more effectively and quickly.

There are four key areas where you can leverage AI to enhance power skills:

To embed strategic thinking

Improve collaboration

Faster problem solving

Improved communication.

Power skills will become even more of a competitive advantage, making or breaking each and every project as AI productivity gains allow more time to be spent on human interaction. Our own research, as well as multiple small- and large-scale studies over the last two decades, consistently cite human factors among the top causes of project failure. Remember that algorithms cannot look anyone in the eye, speak truth to power, stay the ethical course or be accountable for their decisions. Project managers can do all these things and more including the ability to interact with humans, express empathy, adapt, create counterintuitive solutions, decide in ambiguity, negotiate, manage stakeholders, lead, and motivate. Project managers have skills that will never find their way into machines, no matter how smart the machines become.

Business acumen. Professionals with business acumen understand the macro and micro influences in their organization and industry and have the function-specific or domain-specific knowledge to make good decisions. Professionals at all levels need to be able to cultivate effective decision-making and understand how their projects align with the big picture of broader organizational strategy and global trends.

Imagine you want to have a better perspective on the risks at the corporate level of your project or program and the most likely scenarios you may encounter if some of the risks actually occur. AI can help you gain insights to prepare a comprehensive business risk analysis and impact evaluation because of project issues. This will prepare the organization with a recovery plan and to anticipate all mitigation actions before a major event happens and impacts the organization. Project managers can begin to leverage GenAI capabilities for scenario analysis, insights generation and innovation, assessment of business implications, and systems thinking decisions.

The use of AI tools will enhance business acumen in two ways. First, by handling time-consuming, mundane tasks, it will free project managers to spend more time focusing on intraorganizational influences, objectives and relationships. Second, GenAI can augment project managers’ abilities to see the strategic implications of their work, enable them to practice and frame their conversations with high-level stakeholders and make better decisions about their projects. The very presence of these tools may also change the types of business acumen that project managers need to deeply understand, versus those that can be accessed by the tools.

For example, generative AI makes it much easier for any project manager to look at a situation through the eyes of an industry expert (through a prompt). So, like individual phone numbers, general industry knowledge may be less important to retain in the human brain. However, the details of the organization’s competitive advantage, potential leverage from data that exists in the ecosystem, or new data generated by your project – will be something to understand in detail.[1]

Functional operations are becoming more automated and transparent as well. These common software-as-a-service (SaaS) enabled processes are also well defined in general data sets. Again, here, the business acumen that will set you apart has more to do with what is different about the way your organization operates. What makes it special, more efficient, more effective? This level of understanding will help you not only firmly connect to the strategy with your project but allow you to ensure that all of the project-to-organization connections are in place to truly achieve results.

Are you ready to upskill?

Knowledge is a critical element to empowering professionals in their AI journeys. You can tap into specialized training for project managers that will help you navigate this new GenAI-enabled project landscape. Project Management Institute (PMI) recently released a free introductory e-learning course to help combat AI adoption anxiety and fill the knowledge gap among project professionals. It includes relevant use cases and advice on how to use GenAI specifically to deliver projects.

It’s clear that AI is going to enhance the way projects are delivered, transforming the role of project managers into project leaders. There will be new challenges and risks ahead, but by adopting an AI mindset and remaining curious about GenAI’s potential, project professionals will be prepared to deliver successful project outcomes. Continuous learning is the key to navigating the AI revolution and elevating the role that project professionals play across industries.

[1] Edelman, D.C., Abraham, M. (2023, April 12). Generative AI will change your business. Here’s how to adapt. Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2023/04/generative-ai-will-change-your-business-heres-how-to-adapt

[theseasideskies]

“The reason I dislike [these explainer videos] so much is that they are often a form of anti-intellectualism. Operating on the idea that ignorance is purity, that an understanding of culture that rejects metaphor, that rejects the symbolic and clings to the literal is true.”

Re: MatPat's Hollow Knight video. Man maybe the similarities between The Pake King and Ghost are meant to parallel the decisions they make. Maybe they're meant to condemn The Pale King or point out that Ghost's decisions are also imperfect. Maybe those imperfect circumstances are meant to further condemn The Pale King by trapping Hallownest in this situation to begin with! Maybe you're meant to contemplate this yourself!

“There is no wrong way to consume media”

Yes there is and it’s what ever matpat has been doing

[thefullaperture]

The Role of Social Media Algorithms in Spreading Fake News and Disinformation.

The rise of social media has revolutionized the way we consume and share information. However, with the widespread use of social media, there has also been an alarming increase in the spread of fake news and disinformation. Social media algorithms play a significant role in this problem, as they are designed to prioritize engagement and maximize user attention, often at the expense of accurate…