Comment on Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases
MrGabr@ttrpg.network 1 day agoWould you be willing to share why you don’t like the “corpo spying”? I personally never understood - an online service has to know your requests in order to serve the results to you, and keeping revords of those requests is the only way to have personalized recommendations, which I would rather have than be served ads for games (or music or whatever) I’ll never even consider.
MudMan@fedia.io 1 day ago
I'd say I'm more lenient about big data profiles than most people around here. I'd also say I understand why the reaction to the very real, very obvious overreach in the process of creating and using those profiles is radically opposed to any sort of personal recorded info.
The part that's weird is the cute little exception we make around the December holidays to get weirdly invasive infographics to share on social media.
For the record, I'd dispute that I prefer personalized recs to general ads. I already know the things I like that I want to buy. I'd much rather get a poke on things "I'd never consider".
I was on some social media site today and noted that there are some controversies going on where I only ever see the pushback and entirely infer that the people holding the opposite stance do exist, but they never show up in my channels. This is not unexpected in an algorithmically curated info landscape... but it's kind of bad and dangerous.
Ditto for only ever being served media based on the media I already like. Again, obvious but important: that's decidedly NOT how I got to like the media I already like.
MrGabr@ttrpg.network 1 day ago
Regarding social media feeds, I have mixed opinions, because you’re right about the echo chamber, but I also am only still on any mainstream platform for the memes, and I only want it to show me memes, which it wouldn’t do if not for personalized recommendations.
As for games, I don’t want my recommendations to be dominated by whatever has the biggest marketing budget and can take over my feed. I mostly play indie games, and I think if my store page wasn’t personalized, I wouldn’t see nearly as many small games as I do.
MudMan@fedia.io 1 day ago
I mean, you do you, but I don't see any of the things that you want requiring active surveillance. That all seems very attainable by having decent search, filtering and categorization tools.
If anything, I find myself now seeking "hidden gems on Steam" despite Steam knowing everything about my gaming habits. And that's on Steam, which does have a semi-decent crowdsourced tagging and categorization system. Their main page recommendations for e have consistently been either generically popular shovelware or insistent recommendations for games I do like but already own in other platforms that I can't tell Steam to stop shoving down my throat.