#[1]Daniel Lemire's blog » Feed [2]Daniel Lemire's blog » Comments Feed [3]Daniel Lemire's blog » Stop spending so much time being trolled by billionaire corporations! Comments Feed [4]alternate [5]alternate [6]alternate [7]Skip to content [8]Daniel Lemire's blog Daniel Lemire is a computer science professor at the University of Quebec (TELUQ) in Montreal. His research is focused on software performance and data engineering. He is a techno-optimist and a free-speech advocate. (BUTTON) Menu and widgets * [9]My home page * [10]My papers * [11]My software Subscribe Email Address ____________________ ____________________ Subscribe by email You can also follow this blog on [12]telegram. Where to find me? I am on Twitter and GitHub: [13]Follow @lemire IFRAME: [14]https://ghbtns.com/github-btn.html?user=lemire&type=follow&count=tr ue You can also find Daniel Lemire on * on [15]Google Scholar with 4k citations and over 75 peer-reviewed publications, * on [16]Facebook, * and on [17]LinkedIn. 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Recent Posts * [21]Stop spending so much time being trolled by billionaire corporations! * [22]Science and Technology (October 31st 2021) * [23]In C, how do you know if the dynamic allocation succeeded? * [24]In C++, is empty() faster than comparing the size with zero? * [25]Science and Technology links (October 23rd 2021) Recent Comments * tk on [26]Stop spending so much time being trolled by billionaire corporations! * [27]Daniel Lemire on [28]Stop spending so much time being trolled by billionaire corporations! * [29]Leo Boytsov on [30]Stop spending so much time being trolled by billionaire corporations! * [31]Leo Boytsov on [32]Stop spending so much time being trolled by billionaire corporations! * [33]Daniel Lemire on [34]Stop spending so much time being trolled by billionaire corporations! Pages * [35]A short history of technology * [36]About me * [37]Book recommendations * [38]Cognitive biases * [39]Interviews and talks * [40]My bets * [41]My favorite articles * [42]My favorite quotes * [43]My readers * [44]My sayings * [45]Predictions * [46]Recommended video games * [47]Terms of use * [48]Write good papers Archives Archives [Select Month________] Boring stuff * [49]Log in * [50]Entries feed * [51]Comments feed * [52]WordPress.org Stop spending so much time being trolled by billionaire corporations! As a kid, my parents would open the television set, and we would get to watch whatever the state television decided we would watch. It was a push model. Some experts pick the content you need and they deliver it to you. You have little say in the matter. There was one newspaper in my town. We had two or three TV channels. Traditional schools also operate on a push model: the teacher decides whatever you get to learn. So I got to watch hours and hours of incredibly boring TV shows because there was nothing good on. I was very interested in computers and science, but there was almost nothing relevant in the major news sources. When personal computers became popular, I quickly learned more about them than any journalist had. In the early days of the Internet, people wrote on posting boards. Some started blogs. To this day, I get much of my online news by an [53]RSS aggregator which collects information from various blogs and news sites. An RSS aggregator simply picks up all of the news items from various sites, and it lays it out sequentially. You do not like a news source? You unsubscribe. Mailing lists work similarly: you get emails whenever someone has new content. This model has been described as “pull” oriented. You pick your sources. You sidestep the experts. For someone like myself, it was incredibly liberating. As the pull model grew, many people feared that old-school journalism would die. It also challenged conventional education. Within this emerging framework, Silicon Valley invented Twitter, Facebook and other networks. At first they worked much like posting boards and blogs. You launched Twitter and you got the tweets of the people you followed. You did not like someone’s tweets? You just unfollowed them. Google even co-opted the RSS reader by creating a fantastic tool called Google Reader, which put you in control. However, mostly, the industry moved in a different direction. They took control of what you see and read. Brilliant engineers are hard at work making sure that you remain glued to your screen. So they find content that you may like and push it to you. Google closed Google Reader, decimating the RSS reader community. Whereas you could count on the Google search engine delivering the documents containing the keywords you are search, you are increasingly facing a curated list of links. We are back at a push model which is not unlike how things were when I was a kid. The likes of Twitter, Facebook and Google feel like they get to decide what I see. Richard Startin describes my feeling in a couple of tweets: As the user, you are no longer in control. The corporation is wrestling back full control of what you get to watch and read. TikTok is one such tool where you just open the application and watch whatever they want you to watch. You become some kind of automaton. Of course, deciding what people watch and read is valuable. It is a great way to make money. But it also becomes a politically valuable power. And so, it now seems unavoidable that multiple countries in the world will regulate these sites to make sure that you watch the right “things”. Maybe Richard Startin wants to read about what programmers have to say, but what if some corporation or some government feels that he needs to be made aware of some important bit of information, what then ? Thankfully some tools are still leaving you in control: 1. 1. Blogs are still out there. I had 50,000 visitors last month. You can still use RSS readers. [54]You can subscribe to blogs like mine by email. 2. I have recently discovered the fantastic [55]substack community. 3. Telegram is pretty decent as a secured news aggregator. My blog has a [56]telegram channel. Nobody needs to know what you are reading. 4. Twitter has a hidden feature (twitter list) which lets you subscribe to specific individuals and only see content from these individuals. 5. [57]DuckDuckGo is a fantastic search engine which mostly gives me what I am looking for instead of what it thinks I should find. 6. Do not underestimate books. Contrary to what you may have heard, you can still order paper books. The great thing about a paper book is that nobody needs to know what you are reading and when. If you like books and programming, you can grab [58]Performance Analysis and Tuning on Modern CPUs for example. I have many recommendations on the sidebar of my blog. 7. There are fantastic podcasts out there. Spotify has some great stuff, but you can find many others on other platforms. If you like programming, you might want to check [59]corecursive. [60]Joe Rogan is also fantastic. There are many others. Being in control takes work. It also requires you to sometimes pay real money. But do you really want to have your attention is sold and manipulated? I am not advocating that anyone leaves Twitter, Facebook or tiktok, but we should all diversify our information sources. Be conscious that Twitter, Facebook, Google and others are in the business of manipulating your attention for their interest and the interests of their clients. Be smarter! Related: [61]The Social Dilemma. Published by Daniel Lemire A computer science professor at the University of Quebec (TELUQ). [62]View all posts by Daniel Lemire Posted on [63]November 2, 2021November 3, 2021Author [64]Daniel LemireCategories 10 thoughts on “Stop spending so much time being trolled by billionaire corporations!” 1. [65]Leo Boytsov says: [66]November 2, 2021 at 11:33 pm I can hardly imagine reading every tweet posted by people I follow. So thanks to the algorithmic feed I read only the popular ones. This has upsides and downsides, but I can’t imagine going back to reading complete RSS feeds. I think it’s not feasible. For good services, I would pay to not see ads. For example, I pay to youtube, but not to Twitter (and it’s not possible). I wish the payment option was more widely available, but automatic content curation, I’m afraid is unavoidable. [67]Reply 1. [68]Daniel Lemire says: [69]November 3, 2021 at 1:45 am automatic content curation, I’m afraid is unavoidable. I am sure that 30 years ago people believed that television could not be stopped. I have unplugged my television about 10 years ago. Maybe earlier. The Twitter and Google business models are literally to sell off your attention. Let us be clear on this. I do not think that the engineers that work for Facebook are evil. I do think however that they are there to nudge you and to control your intention. I avoid content curation (as practiced by the likes of Twitter or TikTok). I am not telling others to avoid it, but I am urging them to look at alternatives. My bet is that many people would feel a lot better if they avoided it too. We can reasonably disagree about it, of course. Do I think that the Twitter-like content curation will go away soon? No. I think it might stay for a long time. I do not think it means that it is unavoidable. I know people who never used Twitter and Facebook (and they are not so old). [70]Reply 1. [71]Leo Boytsov says: [72]November 3, 2021 at 2:36 am Daniel, don’t forget that even without Twitter and Google you don’t consume raw information. You read newspaper digests, survey articles, etc… These people who summarize information they can manipulate other people. And they will do so. Moreover, before radio and TV, writers used to write long novels in part to get as much reader’s attention as possible. Textbooks are freaking manipulating you. They have errors, biases, and they are often politically motivated. You see, the problem isn’t new. Automatic content aggregation admittedly has more problems, but I personally am ok with it. In fact, my Twitter is nearly 100% professional. And certainly I cannot operate without Google. I cannot review most papers, find necessary information, etc… So what you propose is to reduce my productivity possibly 10x for the joy of not using Google or automatic Twitter feed. This is not a viable option. [73]Reply 1. [74]Daniel Lemire says: [75]November 3, 2021 at 2:45 am I do not need twitter or facebook to do my work and I have hardly used Google (the search engine) in at least two years. There is s whole degree of difference between the nudging that Google does and what the author of a book can do. I am not telling you to stop using twitter btw. [76]Reply 2. [77]Leo Boytsov says: [78]November 3, 2021 at 2:41 am PS: some people are 1. work in a very narrow domain 2. go to conferences 3. have a vast network of professional contacts 4. are privileged in other ways that they don’t use Twitter and LinkedIn doesn’t say much. I am pretty sure they still use Google and who doesn’t? [79]Reply 2. [80]Dave Rolsky says: [81]November 3, 2021 at 1:29 am s/like mind/like mine/ [82]Reply 1. [83]Daniel Lemire says: [84]November 3, 2021 at 1:45 am Thank you. [85]Reply 3. S says: [86]November 3, 2021 at 1:33 am Thanks for introducing me to the COVID news channel: [87]https://t.me/covidinfoenglish I don’t use Telegram. Does this group publish their content elsewhere? [88]Reply 1. [89]Daniel Lemire says: [90]November 3, 2021 at 1:36 am It is a telegram-only channel. [91]Reply 4. tk says: [92]November 3, 2021 at 6:29 am Hello M Lemire, Thanks for roaring about that, I have recently found brave search very efficient as well. [93]Reply Leave a Reply [94]Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. The comment form expects plain text. If you need to format your text, you can use HTML elements such strong, blockquote, cite, code and em. For formatting code as HTML automatically, I recommend [95]tohtml.com. 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