GlyphThere's been a lot of fretting recently—some of it from me—about there being Too Much Politics On Here, encouraging people to (A) stop posting so much about it and (B) post about other things. This is a valid concern but I want to take a moment to put a structural lens on this problem.
We don't have an (sigh) "algorithm" here, so we think of ourselves as liberated from the corrosive engagement-maximizing forces of social media. There is *some* truth to that, but in typical "humanity was the real monster all along" fashion, it undersells what these ML models are actually *doing*.
Twitter, Instagram, et. al. are maximizing engagement by showing you *more* of the kind of posts that'll keep you on the site longer. The kind of posts that distract people, deactivate our collective prefrontal cortex, make us anxious, and generally want to push the lever to get another pellet.
Opting out of the turbo-charging aspect where reactions beget more reactions does *not* opt us out of the fundamental truth that the anxiety-inducing, identity-affirming, mass-audience posts are just going to draw more attention and more approval. We want approval. This is human nature.
Case in point: if I write a long-form blog post that takes me 8 hours to write, that reflects my core competency (Python programming) I will usually get 100 or so 'favs' on it. An anxious (but pithy) post about a recent political development that I am peripherally aware of might do 10x better.
It takes me less time to write, it takes you less time to process, more of you will find it relevant, the whole reward system optimizes for this result. And, even here, there are structural things that reward this as well, although they apply in different degrees to different people.
If I want to take some pictures and post about finding joy in natural beauty, I'm going to get yelled at failing to put in alt text. The website will even yell at me automatically now, to prevent me from posting in the first place. Guess I'll just vent about anxiety instead.
Matt Campbell@glyph Damn, I guess I, and maybe others as well, do need to lighten up about that. Not all media is for everyone; I get that.
@matt FWIW when I see actually visually-impaired people, yourself included, asking for alt text that you're immediately going to _use_, it hardly bothers me at all. And I've extremely rarely felt particularly "yelled at" by you or by any of my other blind followers.
@matt the thing that is really annoying is when someone shows up and says "This Is The Fediverse And Everything Must Be Immediately Accessible Or You Are A Monster, Why Would You Ever Post Without Alt Text". When people post a reply that includes usable alt text I almost always go back and edit it in.
Brian Campbell