Social Media Feeds (was Re: Thoughts on directions for a rebooted SWICG)

Hi Adam, and All,

My "beef" is mainly with mobile phones and mobile phone usage. According to
Andrew Huberman eye movement is crucial in forming and reforming memory, it
goes back to when we were hunting and finding new trails and remembering
old ones. We had large eye movements. The issue with mobile phones is we
have reduced eye movements and this does not trigger memory formation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_D._Huberman a professor of biology and
ophthalmology at Stanford University.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZVw-9ThmSM - short on mobile phone usage,
Acetyl Chloline, the Amygdala, and Dopamine.

Sorry I cannot find his original podcast that states this explicitly, I
think it is in one of the ones about dopamine which there are many and they
are generally two hours long.

There are many papers in the literature on Mobile Phone usage, memory and
cognitive ability. Quoting one quickly :-

"Reliance on smartphones has been linked to a form of psychological
dependency, and this reliance has detrimental effect on our affective
‘mood’ states. For example, feelings of anxiety when one is separated from
their smartphones can interfere with the ability to attend to information.
Cheever et al. observed that heavy and moderate mobile phone users reported
increased anxiety when their mobile phone was taken away as early as 10
minutes into the experiment [14
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7425970/#pone.0219233.ref014>].
They noted that high mobile phone usage was associated with higher risk of
experiencing ‘nomophobia’ (no mobile phone phobia), a form of anxiety
characterized by constantly thinking about one’s own mobile phones and the
desire to stay in contact with the device [15
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7425970/#pone.0219233.ref015>].
Other studies reported similar separation-anxiety and other unpleasant
thoughts in participants when their smartphones were taken away [16
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7425970/#pone.0219233.ref016>]
or the usage was prohibited [17
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7425970/#pone.0219233.ref017>,
18
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7425970/#pone.0219233.ref018>].
Participants also reported having frequent thoughts about their
smartphones, despite their device being out of sight briefly (kept in bags
or pockets), to the point of disrupting their task performance [13
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7425970/#pone.0219233.ref013>].
Taken together, these findings suggest that strong attachment towards a
smartphone has immediate and lasting negative effects on mood and appears
to induce anxiety."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7425970/ - Mobile phones: The
effect of its presence on learning and memory

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29324924/ - Mobile phone use for 5 minutes
can cause significant memory impairment in humans


On a personal note I have been using Facebook since about 2009 and
performed extensive periodic tests with scrolling feeds and the reward
centered behaviour, both for entertainment purpose based usage and also for
purposeful usage for the use of Facebook as in information flagging and
dissemination tool for collecting articles on climate change and
environmental matters which I used it for for about 11 years in from about
2009 to 2018, this was largely on a computer but also on a tablet device.

I have also examined the article/post selection algorithm and how it
changed over time, and how those changes responded to different types of
usage over this period and to the now. The algorithm used to be highly
trainable but what and where you focused attention, it would basically give
you more of what to seeked or draw attention to either by article reads or
by likes or by shares. For me it became a very useful tool for getting the
latest environmental news and scientific articles. But this very mechanism
is also what causes many people using Facebook for non cognitive tasks,
mental addiction issues, and also with the case of instagram problems with
self harm and other destructive behaviours from graphic pictures, self harm
reinforcing stories, and groups.

The algorithm or lack of algorithm or ideally the ability to choose and
tailor algorithms are what I think can break or make social media usage,
take up, and retention of usage.

Andrew Huberman on dopamine, mobile phones, and social media feeds :-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh-AcF_4Hao

I have found now FaceBook, or what I jokingly and un-jokingly call
FarceBook, has now changed to be of very little use to me now. I still
maintain a private environmental group I created, and a public COVID-19
Information Exchange Group which I created back in May 16th 2020m, as a
safe place for serious people wanting to read and exchange information
about COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2, without the issues of conspiracy theories
and denial that were so prevalent on FaceBook at the time. for moderated
scientific articles and news, to which I am very grateful to my coadmin for
taking the helm in moderation at times of too much stress at times during
this period.

FaceBook and Instagram also use SHA256 of images, triggering associative
statistical graph based learning, where image types can be "classified" and
attached to actions for example a friend of mine likes birds of the
ornithological nature, I started sending him pictures of birds, so FaceBook
picked up on this and started feeding me them particularly in association
to both him and his wife, when I contacting either them or on their posts
coming up on my feed.

So the algorithm can be key to how Social Media can be fun and rewarding,
how it can be addictive, how it can be distractive in a good, or
destructive in a bad way, and how it can be crucial to people adopting and
keeping using a platform. I think a good post selection algorithm is
essential for social media as both a tool and a form of entertainment as
what comes up on a feed if just random selection can either be boring, non
attention keeping, and result in retaining people not using a
platform, which seems to have happened to the generation of FaceBook alike
clones, like MeWe for example. Another major factor is FaceBooks people
momentum, literally the number of people using the platform and the lack of
people's mass or momentum on these third party "spin-off" platforms.

I think an algorithm for post selection is essential. Ideally this/the
algorithm is tailorable or even choosable and selectable by the user.

I am interested in what I term social collaboration platforms, where we
still have feeds but the remit of the platform is more geared towards
creative or loose organization usage. More like a news feed or a topic
orientated usage. I have many ideas in this field and am looking to work on
a system which captures all of these issues in a creative and sustainable
way.

On a closing note :-

"There is nothing like a book, a random access device, where you can flick
to the contents or index then quickly flick to the desired page, sometimes
automatically. ... Some well trained books remember pages and can
automagically guide you to the very page where you wished to go, ...."  - I
am paraphrasing a Guardian article I can no longer find.

Hoping this will create a whole debate on this topic so we can work on
providing a social experience that is wholesome, enjoyable, and educational.

Regards,

Aaron Gray

On Fri, 2 Dec 2022 at 00:52, Adam Lake <adam@mosaic.social> wrote:

> Hi SWICG!
>
> Thanks Erin, for starting this thread.
>
> Some of you know me, many of you don’t.
>
> I founded Mosaic Foundation <https://www.mosaic.social/> in the Spring of
> this year, with the mission to foster digital infrastructure for a new era
> of democratic societies. Prior to that I worked in the Self Sovereign
> Identity space for six years doing business development. I have had a
> passion for decentralized social media since before the Diaspora
> Kickstarter campaign.
>
> We have a real shot at fostering new more egalitarian and democratic forms
> of human coordination and my hope is that the Fediverse can be digital
> infrastructure for that potential future. I’d like to see the Fediverse be
> something for the masses, for each person and group to build community in
> whatever way they choose.
>
> Some of the topics I am interested in discussing are:
>
>    1.
>
>    Performance: what can be done about the performance issues of some of
>    the larger instances, like Mastodon.social. Are there ways to ensure
>    performance across the Fediverse? This seems critical for high bandwidth
>    cases like video streaming.
>    2.
>
>    Easy profile and data portability: can we make it easier to backup
>    one’s social data (e.g. posts) and migrate to a new server without data
>    loss or loss of social connection?
>    3.
>
>    Single-user instances: is it feasible from a technological and
>    economic efficiency standpoint to enable single-user instances in the
>    Fediverse?
>    4.
>
>    Spaces/Groups/Communities: how do we enable independent spaces,
>    groups, or communities in the Fediverse such that people can join one or
>    more private or public groups, receive posts, and make comments, without
>    having to create a new account for each group they join?
>
>
> I wonder if anyone is also interested in discussing big picture
> philosophical, economic, and social issues related to growing the Fediverse
> into an ecosystem that minimizes harm and maximizes prosocial outcomes.
>
> Like
>
> Social harms of existing social media: how do we correct for the harms
> that the predominant social media paradigm produces?
>
>    1.
>
>    Ledger of Harms as defined by the Center for Humane Technology,
>    https://ledger.humanetech.com/
>    1.
>
>       Attention Hijacking: Optimized for time on site, wastes time
>       2.
>
>       Social Sensemaking: Misinformation / Disinformation
>       3.
>
>       Democracy and Elections: Powerful Propaganda, Lack of Transparency
>       4.
>
>       Mental Health: Addiction, stress, loneliness
>       5.
>
>       Memory and Cognition: Reduces memory and focus
>       6.
>
>       Childhood Development: Developmental Delays, Suicide
>
>
> Enough from me!
>
> I am very much looking forward to the SWICG starting back up and
> collaborating with you all. :)
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> Adam Lake
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 1, 2022 at 2:24 PM Aaron Gray <aaronngray@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> a) I read VM code bases, V8 is far far more optimized than Ruby's
>> b) Installing Mastodon overheated my BananaPi M3 and shutdown it down !
>>
>> On Thu, 1 Dec 2022 at 19:04, Christopher Guess <cguess@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Aaron,
>>>
>>> Do you have any numbers for the claim that ruby is ineffecient compared
>>> to JS? I’ve never seen it claim to be more power effecient (and on a
>>> Mastodon server speed should probably be preferred over power effeciency).
>>>
>>> -Christopher Guess
>>> cguess@gmail.com
>>> US/WhatsApp/Signal: +1 262.893.1037
>>> PGP: AAE7 5171 0D81 B45B – https://keybase.io/cguess
>>>
>>> On Thursday, Dec 01, 2022 at 1:31 PM, Aaron Gray <aaronngray@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> The issue I have with Mastodon is its server is written in Ruby and is
>>> very inefficient. And as a result it is not green energywise.
>>>
>>> I am looking at putting together first a Node.js implementation similar
>>> to Mastodon as a reference implementation to work from as I find Rails very
>>> strange (also) then look at a full RDF based implementation, followed by an
>>> implementation in a static language like Rust or C++.
>>>
>>> I am gemming up on all the standards involved first and having a look at
>>> some of the existing implementations that we do have.
>>> I am compiling a list of links for the whole area too as well which I
>>> will probably put on GitHub.
>>> There are some existing resource lists :-
>>> https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/ https://activitypub.rocks/
>>> And a page for implementers :-
>>> https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/pub/guide-for-new-activitypub-implementers
>>> Activity Streams seems to be the actual data side of the ActivityPub
>>> protocol used for communicating between "mailboxes" :-
>>> https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-core/
>>>
>>> It would be nice to have protocol implementations in all the main
>>> languages TypeScript, JavaScript, Java, Rust, C++, Python, ..., adhering to
>>> a standard API structure isomorphic to the problem domain / specs, and to
>>> have UML based documentation
>>> With ActivityStreams like db and db adapters for main dbs like GraphDB
>>> and more traditional DB's like PostgresSQL.
>>> So ActivityStreams as the data model, and ActivityPub as the
>>> communications protocol running over HTTP(S)
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Aaron
>>>
>>> On Wed, 30 Nov 2022 at 22:12, Erin Shepherd <erin.shepherd@e43.eu>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Eight (!) years ago, I kicked off what became *AcitvityPub* with an
>>>> e-mail to the SocialWG mailing lists linking to a draft of a protocol I
>>>> named *ActivityPump*; I hoped but never imagined it would end up being
>>>> quite so influential.
>>>>
>>>> It's been nearly four years since the ActivityPub specification was
>>>> published, and never has it felt felt more urgent that we find a way to
>>>> revisit aspects of the standard *together*. None of what follows is in
>>>> any way gospel, these are just my thoughts; but I feel one big thing we've
>>>> been lacking is direction and this is an attempt to give that
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> The challenge, as I see it, with developing anything involved in the
>>>> social web, has always been that everyone's developing their own thing.
>>>> That's really exciting, and it makes the ecosystem incredibly vibrant, but
>>>> it's also quite troublesome, because you end up with 15 people working on
>>>> 15 different things, rather than working towards a cohesive whole. The
>>>> ecosystem and the network have suffered from this; I feel like one of the
>>>> reasons things never really got off of the ground here after the SocialWG
>>>> closed is that there was no obvious direction.
>>>>
>>>> So I would like to suggest that we pick *themes* to work on - one
>>>> initially, with scope to add more as those are established. Perhaps these
>>>> might eventualy feed into the charter for any future ActivityPub WG. We
>>>> should, in general, try and focus on areas causing user issues or friction
>>>> in the network today.
>>>>
>>>> I think there's a general sentiment across the fediverse that our
>>>> biggest problems are to do with inadequite tools to handle *moderation
>>>> and harassment*. There's a mix of implementation improvements and
>>>> protocol improvements that need to be made in this area, but I think it's
>>>> important that we do the protocol development *in particular* outside
>>>> the scope of any single project because it's the sort of thing which is
>>>> likely to become a mandatory feature.
>>>>
>>>> Some particular sub-areas of focus that I can think of:
>>>>
>>>>    1. *Spam Filtering/Sockpuppet Prevention*
>>>>    Or: how to stop people from setting up new servers to bypass your
>>>>    blocks (without caving and resorting to allow-list federation)
>>>>
>>>>    I made a post about this yesterday
>>>>    <https://blog.erinshepherd.net/2022/11/a-better-moderation-system-is-possible-for-the-social-web/>
>>>>
>>>>    This one's a relatively complex addition, but I think it's vital.
>>>>    2.
>>>> *Indirect Harrassment via Replies *Presently, threads are "backwards
>>>>    authenticated" via the *inReplyTo* field from the comment to the
>>>>    parent, but there's no forward authentication from parent to comment. Even
>>>>    if I block you, it's possible for you to reply to my posts, and while my
>>>>    server won't show your replies when looking at my post, other servers which
>>>>    saw your replies will.
>>>>
>>>>    I don't think allowing people to make "unapproved" replies is bad;
>>>>    but I do think that when looking at a post, implementations *should*
>>>>    de-prioritise such replies (think of Twitter's "more replies have been
>>>>    hidden" feature, which normally hides a bunch of cryptocurrency spammers)
>>>>
>>>>    I think this is a relatively straightforward protocol change,
>>>>    involving adding a way to indicate a post is in "approved replies" mode,
>>>>    and distributing those approvals. (I think Hubzilla has already implemented
>>>>    something vaguely - but not completely - along these lines)
>>>>    3.
>>>> *Better tools for moderators *This is perhaps the least well defined
>>>>    point (and the one which, in some ways, requires the most implementer
>>>>    buy-in), but I really think we need to specify both the existing reporting
>>>>    protocol, and extend it to (a) allow withdrawing reports and (b) add
>>>>    coments, so server moderators can communicate with each other "in band".
>>>>
>>>> I don't think this is the only topic area worthy of discussion, but I
>>>> think it's by far the most vital. There are other areas I see as very
>>>> important long term (e.g. codifying a way to move accounts without the
>>>> cooperation of the server you're moving away from, simplifying the
>>>> cross-server follow flow, and *eventually* supporting nomadic
>>>> identities), but I think the solutions to those are less well defined, and
>>>> the need is less pressing.
>>>>
>>>> I'm very curious to see the group's thoughts.
>>>>
>>>> (One other thing I think would be a *good* thing to do is to revise
>>>> the AP spec and explicitly document the holes we left because we couldn't
>>>> find agreement with actual practice; but that would be a task for any
>>>> ActivityPub WG that is formed, which I would support)
>>>>
>>>> -- Erin
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Aaron Gray
>>>
>>> Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher,
>>> Information Theorist, and Computer Scientist.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Aaron Gray
>>
>> Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher,
>> Information Theorist, and Computer Scientist.
>>
>>

-- 
Aaron Gray

Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher,
Information Theorist, and Computer Scientist.