History has the habit of repeating itself and this is not just a saying, it is really true. I see this lately on X and it wouldn't be a problem if it'd be a good thing repeating itself, but it isn't. Good thing there's a blocking 🚫 option available to use, which is needed daily, countless times, and my biggest fear is the number of blocking possibilities is limited and then I'm going to need to make a decision.
X is a business, a huge one and it's getting bigger and bigger every day. While typing this post on my phone, the app is suggesting words and after typing "bigger and", the suggested word was "better" and I wish I could choose it to finish my sentence, but it's not the case. It's not getting better and yesterday was testing my nerves once again.
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For some unknown reason, the algo thought I'm interested in Nigerians doing extremely stupid things, like teaching people how to pick pockets, or steal from handbags, beating each other up on the street and finding it funny too. I can assure you, whoever is enjoying such content is dealing with severe IQ deficiency and I wish I would understand why X wants to shove such garbage down on anyone's throat.
There's funny content and there's garbage and what I've been getting these days is part of the latter. It goes to show the level of education some people have and the direction some societies are going into. I personally would rather jump off the cliff, than spend my precious time watching this garbage every single day like so many do and even worse that they think they are going to make money sharing such videos. It's possible such content is consumed locally, I mean in some African countries (I'm just guessing), but any normal person with half a brain would say no to it.
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Complaining on X about it would be like talking to walls. Money talks, making profit is the goal and everything else is irrelevant to them, so if they have to shove garbage down your throat to make money, that's exactly what they are going do and you take it or leave it.
Things are a bit different on the blockchain. I can write this on Hive as I have my blog to post on and some general communities giving home to such content, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm bothering people with it, and if I do, those bothered can mute me, to solve the problem.
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You have the following option, that gives you the opportunity to determine what content you want to see and this can only be disturbed by reblogs, but you can happily exclude those from your feed as well and get on with the content you choose to see.
Recently there has been another feed option added, that is the "Discovery Feed". The best thing about it is that it's optional and definitely not mandatory, so you can use it, or not, it's up to you. I still have to test it and make suggestions to the dev team, if I have any and the good thing is the team actually listens.
This "shove it down their throat" technique has always been present in social media, one way or another and it is moving from shoving ads down your throat to shoving content down people's throat. I bet you remember those platforms that have been serving you ads and popup windows from every direction that made you leave in 20 seconds without even being able to read the article, with your eyes spiraling and your head spinning.
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I was wondering if we'll ever have a web2 platform that is going to respect the readers and not torture them in order to make profit. What they do is similar to when you go to the theater to watch Romeo and Julia for example, then all of a sudden newspaper and snacks sellers are flooding the place, bugging everyone to buy what they are selling and you can't see the play until you remove them from the scene.
The truth is, I wouldn't mind getting suggested content if it was high quality and related to what interests me, but that never happen as all we get is low IQ content that makes you lose brain cells, so the less you use the platform, the better, or hope to get a good day and leave when you see garbage coming your way.
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