{"id":104417,"date":"2019-05-07T14:27:52","date_gmt":"2019-05-07T19:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/?p=104417"},"modified":"2023-07-01T15:28:35","modified_gmt":"2023-07-01T20:28:35","slug":"escape-the-algorithm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/leisure\/books\/escape-the-algorithm\/","title":{"rendered":"Escape the Algorithm!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Poster<\/p>\n

The way I consumed information online radically changed on July 1, 2013. Before that date I was an avid Google Reader user. After July 1, I stopped being a Google Reader user because Google shut it down. <\/span><\/p>\n

For those of you who don\u2019t remember Google Reader, it was an RSS feed aggregator. <\/span><\/p>\n

For those of you who don\u2019t know what RSS is, it stands for \u201creal simple syndication.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

RSS is a web feed that most websites have that allows you to read information from a website without actually going to the website. A lot of the internet runs on RSS feeds — you just don\u2019t realize it. For example, if you <\/span>subscribe to the AoM podcast<\/span><\/a> on iTunes or Spotify, iTunes and Spotify are using the RSS feed for my podcast to get my podcast on their respective platforms. <\/span><\/p>\n

Way back in the 2000s, before Twitter was much of a thing and before Facebook was being used as a publishing platform, a lot of people followed a website\u2019s RSS feed to stay up to date on their latest articles. You could input all of the feeds from your favorite websites to an RSS feed aggregator, like Google Reader, so you could read all of your favorite websites in the same place. It was like having your own personalized daily newspaper. It was amazing!<\/span><\/p>\n

But when Google Reader shut down, I stopped using RSS feeds. There were other feed aggregators out there, but they weren\u2019t as easy to use as Google Reader. <\/span><\/p>\n

So I started getting my online content the way most people get it today: Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites. <\/span><\/p>\n

At first, it wasn\u2019t so bad. But then I started noticing that I wasn\u2019t seeing all the updates from pages I followed on Facebook. Come to find out, Facebook started changing their News Feed algorithm so that only the content Facebook <\/span>thought<\/span><\/i> you\u2019d be interested in the most showed up in your feed. Facebook claimed they were just trying to help users sift through the firehose of information being blasted at them. Critics argued Facebook was just trying to keep people more engaged on Facebook because that makes money for Facebook. And that they were trying to force pages to pay money for their content to show up in the News Feeds they had once shown up in organically. I was just ticked that I wasn\u2019t seeing all the stuff from Facebook pages that I had deliberately opted into getting updates from.<\/span><\/p>\n

Twitter added changes to their algorithm that boosted tweets to the top of your timeline based on what they thought you\u2019d want to see. Again, Twitter claimed they were trying to be helpful. Critics argued it was just a ploy for users to engage with and stay on Twitter longer (which makes Twitter more money). I was miffed some algorithm was deciding what I saw. <\/span><\/p>\n

Besides resenting the fact that an automated computer program was shaping what I paid attention to in order to make an international corporation more money, I started to sour on another facet of consuming content from social media: the social aspect. <\/span><\/p>\n

Before I clicked on a link from Facebook to an article that looked interesting to me, comments from a bunch of internet randos jumped out from the screen, offering an often ill-informed hot take, that, 9 times out of 10, was based entirely on the headline; they hadn\u2019t actually read the piece. Same thing on Twitter. I was confronted with other people\u2019s opinions about an article, before I had the chance to read it and form my own. <\/span><\/p>\n

Besides the comments, there are those other little signals on social media that can end up skewing what you think of something: likes, RTs, faves, hearts. <\/span><\/p>\n

And come to find out, a lot of these \u201cone-bit indicators\u201d (as <\/span>Digital Minimalism<\/span><\/i><\/a> author Cal Newport calls them) are coming from bots. Not from actual people. A lot of social media is fake. Hype.<\/span><\/p>\n

To paraphrase my childhood sports hero Frank Thomas: \u201cYou shouldn’t believe the hype.\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

So over the past few years, I\u2019ve slowly been opting out of the hype machine of social media in my personal life. I deleted my personal Facebook account a few years ago, and I stopped checking Twitter last year. My personal Instagram account has gone dormant. (I\u2019ve been moving AoM away from social media too: we\u2019ve stopped checking and sharing content on Facebook, automate 99% of what we share on Twitter, and use Instagram sparingly). <\/span><\/p>\n

To keep up on the things that interest me, I\u2019ve wandered back to using technologies from 2008: RSS and email. I\u2019ve returned to using an online RSS aggregator to keep up on the sites that I enjoy, and I\u2019ve also subscribed to a few email newsletters from companies and individuals who put out stuff I like perusing. <\/span><\/p>\n

My information consumption has escaped the algorithm and let me tell you, it feels amazing. Since ceasing to use social media to get my content and relying on these two pre-social media technologies instead, my life has improved significantly in several ways:<\/span><\/p>\n

I see the content I want to see. <\/b>One of the blogs I enjoy is Marginal Revolution<\/a>, by economist (<\/span>and AoM podcast guest<\/span><\/a>) Tyler Cowen. If I were to follow Marginal Revolution on Facebook, there\u2019s a good chance that I wouldn\u2019t see all their updates. But since I follow Marginal Revolution via RSS, I never miss any of them. <\/span><\/p>\n

Am I interested in everything Marginal Revolution puts out? Of course not, but instead of some stupid social media algorithm trying to predict whether I\u2019ll be interested in a piece of content or not, <\/span>I <\/span><\/i>get to decide whether I\u2019m interested in it or not. It\u2019s nice being in complete control of my media consumption again. <\/span><\/p>\n

I no longer see other people\u2019s opinions about content before I consume said content. <\/b>When you subscribe to a site\u2019s RSS feed, you just see the content. That\u2019s it. There are no comments or social media feedback about that content. Instead of the hot take of some internet stranger tainting how I read something, I read it completely unfiltered and come to my own conclusions. <\/span><\/p>\n

Reading content without the social media commentary is <\/span>a way to practice self-reliance<\/span><\/a>. Instead of relying on other people to help you figure out what you think of something, you get to figure that out yourself. You\u2019re in charge, and being in charge of your opinions feels good. <\/span><\/p>\n

I spend less time online. <\/b>AoM podcast guest John Zeratsky<\/span><\/a> calls Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram \u201cinfinity pools.\u201d They\u2019re apps in which the content is continually refreshed, and thus has no \u201cend.\u201d You might use Twitter to follow some \u201cthought leader\u201d you enjoy, but besides the stuff he puts out, you\u2019re also presented with all the comments that his followers append to his tweets. There\u2019s a constant stream of new content and commentary on Twitter, and as our brains desire novelty, that makes the platform massively appealing to check over and over again. You\u2019re never done reading content on social media.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now that I just consume my content via RSS or email, I\u2019ve found myself spending less time online. I check my RSS feeds in the morning and in the evening. That\u2019s it. Since there\u2019s no social commentary on RSS feeds, there\u2019s no reason to keep checking back to see what other people had to say. You just read the article and you\u2019re done. There\u2019s some finitude to it. <\/span><\/p>\n

I rest easy knowing that social media companies have less data on me. <\/b>Social media companies don\u2019t charge you money to use their services, but that doesn\u2019t mean the services are \u201cfree.\u201d Instead of exchanging money, you hand over gobs of personal and private information about yourself, which allows social media companies to sell ads targeted to your personal dossier. <\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, these companies (particularly Facebook) have a lousy track record of keeping your private information private. <\/span><\/p>\n

The rugged, individualistic, keep-out-of-my-business side of myself treasures his privacy. I like for other people or companies to <\/span>not<\/span><\/i> know what\u2019s going on in all facets of my life. While I\u2019ll likely never be able to completely eliminate my digital footprint, reducing my social media use can significantly shrink it. <\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m happier. <\/b>One of the things I\u2019ve noticed about not using social media is that I just feel happier. I think there\u2019s a couple of things going on there. <\/span><\/p>\n

First, because I\u2019m spending less time online I have more time to do things I enjoy in real life.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Second, most of the commentary on social media skews negative because negativity gets attention and attention is the coin of the online realm. Because I don\u2019t see the opinions of the masses on RSS or email, I don\u2019t expose myself to all the negativity that plagues social media. I\u2019ve noticed I\u2019m less pissy the less I\u2019m exposed to the low-grade fever of anger that constantly brews online.<\/span><\/p>\n

Third, social media can really skew what your brain considers important. I remember when I was a Twitter junkie, I had this feeling that all the commentary and controversies were super important. If everyone on Twitter was talking about it, it had to be important, right? <\/span><\/p>\n

Not really. <\/span><\/p>\n

One thing I\u2019ve learned by taking a step back from Twitter is that whatever feels important on Twitter usually isn\u2019t that important in \u201cmeat space.\u201d I\u2019ve had people tell me about Twitter controversies and but for them telling me about them, I wouldn\u2019t have known about those \u201chappenings\u201d at all. My life continued to go on as normal when I didn\u2019t know about them, and my life continued to go on as normal after I learned about them secondhand. <\/span><\/p>\n

Now that I\u2019m off social media, my brain\u2019s bandwidth is no longer clogged up with all that faux-important social media garbage. My attention is focused on the stuff that\u2019s really important: family, friends, health, spirituality, and of course, barbell training. <\/span><\/p>\n

Research actually confirms that you\u2019ll be happier once you stop using social media. Who doesn\u2019t want to be happier?<\/span><\/p>\n

How to Escape the Algorithm<\/h3>\n

Life\u2019s great outside the social media algorithm. It is for me at least. <\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe you\u2019ll enjoy it, too. <\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking to escape the algorithm, below I offer a few suggestions on how to do that:<\/span><\/p>\n

Use RSS feeds to consume content.<\/b> Over the past few years, several RSS feed aggregators have come out on the market that serve as great replacements for Google Reader. They all work pretty much the same way, with a few minor differences. Find one that works for you.<\/span><\/p>\n