Unpopular Opinion

I want to curate my feed to mostly just contain serious people.

So I'll just point out that this desire is kind of the whole point of features that allow you to follow specific users on a social media system. This is better when manually curated, rather than relying on some algorithm to do a bad job of it for you. So far, every application of such models to social media tends to amplify noise rather than reduce it, and this is mostly because it does not and cannot replicate human awareness.

The desire for such a function to be performed automatically (without your direct attention and involvement) is diametrically opposed to the desire for high-quality output. Quality requires a level of attention that cannot be automated. The program doesn't care, it's not capable of that.

Reddit-imitating platforms like Lemmy aren't really built for following specific users, the intent is more of a public square. The benefit is that it's harder to end up in an echo chamber (as long as you avoid places like hexbear and .ml where the admins enforce echo chamber conditions intentionally). The cost is that you will always be exposed to some noise. You don't get freedom without some chaos.

Platforms that might provide better what you want would be Mastodon or BlueSky, where you can follow professionals who voice public opinions on topics that you find relevant, and read responses from other users.

Whatever gene makes people want to shout these thought-terminating clichés, upvote others who do it, and find some sense of belonging from it is clearly missing from me. I'd rather just not even hear about it - it's extremely exhausting and has never achieved anything worthwhile.

Hmm, well I'll point out a couple of things:

1. Self-expression is not really about "achieving" anything.
   There is a level of attention-seeking behavior that can get... cringy? for lack of a better word... but also, like, welcome to the human race, I guess? People want to feel included in the social group, and in the conversation of the moment, and that's entirely normal behavior. Attention-seeking behavior happens because people don't want to feel lonely, and that's OK.
2. I think you're displaying a degree of entitlement here, where you expect other people to express themselves in a way that you find agreeable.
3. There is some utility in this overall, as a sort of barometer of public opinion, though you have to be aware of the context of the community you're in. (e.g. a commonly expressed opinion on Lemmy does not necessarily reflect a common opinion of people in your workplace or neighborhood)

Also, at the risk of repeating a tired cliché, be the change you want to see in the world.

Assuming I’m not a serious person because I’m against using AI is already shortsighted and echo-chamber-y

:3

You've had it for over a decade. Go check out Facebook.

It's maximized for engagement, not your pleasure.

So start blocking people, no fucking AI needed.

You don't have a problem with the "noise".

You have a problem with other opinions.

You just call it "noise" because it lets you feel like you have a valid point.

Silly hats only.

Isn't that more the point of serious newspapers or at least press agencies than social media feeds?

It doesn't really matter whether most people like the smell of your farts or not - you're still poisoning the air.

My farts aren't that dangerous 🫣

I doubt that this is (reliably) possible using LLMs, because the underlying logic essentially only calculates probabilities based on the sequence of words.

You would need a logic that strictly defines what you want to see. However, this would likely result in a whole series of "false positives" that would be filtered out, because it will hardly be possible to know in advance what users will post and in what form.

An example: It should be perfectly possible to set it up so that you don’t see any posts that express negative views on the topic of AI (sentiment analysis), but in doing so, comments or posts that are actually quite witty would almost certainly be filtered out as well.

This is the crux of the matter with LLMs: In and of themselves, they have numerous, very useful applications, yet simply because of the term “artificial intelligence,” there is often a misrepresentation of what these models are capable of. They don't think like humans do; they are merely a tool.

Well I want you to not use AI, but we don't always get what we want

I still feel chatbots are kinda like graphical vs non graphical and I would actually like to see a real free software version integrated into a free software operating system on free/libre hardware. It should be just enough to converse and deal with the operating system basically being trained on that. Then users should be able to add capability. For example a plugin or extension that allows it to query wikipedia or project guetnberg or such.