Over reliance on algorithms has degraded the user experience to the point that the average user is drowning in ragebait and extremist politics, because they drive up engagement. Just like a toddler, algorithms don’t discriminate between good and bad attention, so everything that gets clicks is thrust forward. Now, you could hope to train the algorithm to show you only postive things, but engagement is engagement and the algorithm curators often engage in rage farming, where your feed is injected with things that are likely to enrage you.

You can avoid this by installing an RSS reader, going to your favorite sites, and manually adding a RSS feed. Now, your reader has things that you manually selected, with the added bonus of having a content pipe free of malicious interference. You can also divide topics in a way that you can avoid certain themes and news until you decide to engage them.

  • nadram@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Feedly does a good job with the free version. I just went back to it a few weeks ago.

    • mikelykzit@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I have found myself using Feedly more these past few weeks as well.

      If you’re on Android, a great companion is the FeedMe app. It has a lot more customization options and can download (for offline reading) full articles, rather than just showing the snippet Feedly does.