Recently I read a post by some jackhole techbro who wants a default automatic feed algorithm here just like Big Social™.
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@lisamelton Nah, I'd love it if people that post only when I'm asleep, or people that only post occasionally get bubbled up so that I can read their stuff and not have it buried by folks that post several times a day, every day. "Algorithm" isn't an inherently naughty word.
Agreed, at the end of the day even the ordered by time list of posts we have now is an "algorithm"
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Recently I read a post by some jackhole techbro who wants a default automatic feed algorithm here just like Big Social
.Opening the door for AI bullshit is not even the worst part of this idea.
Folks, all of us here ARE the algorithm. Personal curation is a feature, not a bug.
We make Mastodon awesome by following people and boosting what we find meaningful, significant or just cool. That's how it works.
Let's keep making friends. Let's keep sharing. Let's keep Mastodon alive. Together.
@lisamelton you're right!
It's not true that "the Fediverse has no algorithm"
The algorithm is just easy to miss because it's implemented not through machines but through ourselves and other people
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@lisamelton i'll play devil's advocate on this one. I'm a #mastodon noob. So maybe i'm doing something wrong.
My feed features numerous low-effort posts with no community engagement. One after the other. Is there room for improvement in the algorithm?
I feel that labelling users who voluntarily provide feedback - as 'jackholes', is unnecessary. ( with all due respect
)My 2 cents.
My feed features numerous low-effort posts with no community engagement. One after the other. Is there room for improvement in the algorithm?
There seems to be some misunderstanding here. Your feed contains the posts by people you follow and the hashtags you follow. There is no algorithmic selection of things to show you beyond that.
The problem is discovery. How do you find people / hashtags to follow that meet your goals for what your feed should contain?
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Recently I read a post by some jackhole techbro who wants a default automatic feed algorithm here just like Big Social
.Opening the door for AI bullshit is not even the worst part of this idea.
Folks, all of us here ARE the algorithm. Personal curation is a feature, not a bug.
We make Mastodon awesome by following people and boosting what we find meaningful, significant or just cool. That's how it works.
Let's keep making friends. Let's keep sharing. Let's keep Mastodon alive. Together.
@lisamelton I'd like to be able to apply my own algorithm to my home feed, though. Some sort of syntax that you can save as 'filters', similar to how you'd configure a search engine to generate relevant results. People could share and discuss these, and it would foster a deeper understanding of the impact these algorithms have on what people see. My main fear is that instances would pop up that come with 'built in' malicious filters.
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My feed features numerous low-effort posts with no community engagement. One after the other. Is there room for improvement in the algorithm?
There seems to be some misunderstanding here. Your feed contains the posts by people you follow and the hashtags you follow. There is no algorithmic selection of things to show you beyond that.
The problem is discovery. How do you find people / hashtags to follow that meet your goals for what your feed should contain?
hi david, thanks.
I think my misunderstanding stemmed from the fact that, i'm following a popular hashtag with numerous low quality posts. All of which are appearing on my feed. I'm also getting same entity posts
I realise there's a beauty behind a manually selected feed. Many Social Networks will use a hybrid model of a personalised selection and algorithmic filtering.
Noone wants #mastodon to become another Facebook. Let's respect (and learn from) our foe?
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@lisamelton i'll play devil's advocate on this one. I'm a #mastodon noob. So maybe i'm doing something wrong.
My feed features numerous low-effort posts with no community engagement. One after the other. Is there room for improvement in the algorithm?
I feel that labelling users who voluntarily provide feedback - as 'jackholes', is unnecessary. ( with all due respect
)My 2 cents.
@DazRunner @lisamelton Looking at your profile, you are currently following 7 people, so your feed will consist of posts and boosts by those 7 people, plus anything you post or boost. If you want a better feed, you will need to follow more people. It takes time to curate your own feed - you are the algorithm.
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Recently I read a post by some jackhole techbro who wants a default automatic feed algorithm here just like Big Social
.Opening the door for AI bullshit is not even the worst part of this idea.
Folks, all of us here ARE the algorithm. Personal curation is a feature, not a bug.
We make Mastodon awesome by following people and boosting what we find meaningful, significant or just cool. That's how it works.
Let's keep making friends. Let's keep sharing. Let's keep Mastodon alive. Together.
@lisamelton default automatic feeds are well and good, but there's something special about someone seeing and interacting with your post because they want to, not because they have to (speaking as a creative and content creator of course)
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@DazRunner @lisamelton Looking at your profile, you are currently following 7 people, so your feed will consist of posts and boosts by those 7 people, plus anything you post or boost. If you want a better feed, you will need to follow more people. It takes time to curate your own feed - you are the algorithm.
Hi Hollie,
Thanks
you're right. I am following a small subset of the community. I only joined in the past day or two. There's a beauty to creating your own personalized feed from scratch. I understand this. However, it takes time, energy and expertise. For a poweruser it'll be obvious and natural.
This engenders an element of the 'curse of knowledge' though imo. Where users assume knowledge and skill on behalf of others. I want the community to be my algorithm
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Recently I read a post by some jackhole techbro who wants a default automatic feed algorithm here just like Big Social
.Opening the door for AI bullshit is not even the worst part of this idea.
Folks, all of us here ARE the algorithm. Personal curation is a feature, not a bug.
We make Mastodon awesome by following people and boosting what we find meaningful, significant or just cool. That's how it works.
Let's keep making friends. Let's keep sharing. Let's keep Mastodon alive. Together.
@lisamelton no one stops him to build his own fork and implement such an algorithm.
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Recently I read a post by some jackhole techbro who wants a default automatic feed algorithm here just like Big Social
.Opening the door for AI bullshit is not even the worst part of this idea.
Folks, all of us here ARE the algorithm. Personal curation is a feature, not a bug.
We make Mastodon awesome by following people and boosting what we find meaningful, significant or just cool. That's how it works.
Let's keep making friends. Let's keep sharing. Let's keep Mastodon alive. Together.
@lisamelton but we do have an automatic default feed algorithm!
That the default automatic feed algorithm is "posts of accounts you follow in chronological order" is beside the point, it's still an algorithm, it's still the default, and it's still automatic.
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Hi Hollie,
Thanks
you're right. I am following a small subset of the community. I only joined in the past day or two. There's a beauty to creating your own personalized feed from scratch. I understand this. However, it takes time, energy and expertise. For a poweruser it'll be obvious and natural.
This engenders an element of the 'curse of knowledge' though imo. Where users assume knowledge and skill on behalf of others. I want the community to be my algorithm
@DazRunner @lisamelton I'm not actually sure what point you are making when you say "I want the community to be my algorithm." You can choose who to follow for your personal feed, and in addition Trending will show you the more popular posts, and Live Feeds gives you the options of seeing your server's posts, or posts on other servers.
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Recently I read a post by some jackhole techbro who wants a default automatic feed algorithm here just like Big Social
.Opening the door for AI bullshit is not even the worst part of this idea.
Folks, all of us here ARE the algorithm. Personal curation is a feature, not a bug.
We make Mastodon awesome by following people and boosting what we find meaningful, significant or just cool. That's how it works.
Let's keep making friends. Let's keep sharing. Let's keep Mastodon alive. Together.
@lisamelton Naaa we're good.
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@FallsMom @lisamelton (I saw it because of an algorithm: the trending tab)
I can understand if people are overwhelmed by posts in their timeline because they're following people that post a lot. They may want to continue following them but get fewer things, and there could be room for a "less of this"/"more of this" personal curator thingy. The key is letting it be completely controlled by the user, and transparent. It might still not be a good idea, but worth exploring.
@ahltorp @FallsMom @lisamelton Why not just stop following overly prolific people?
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@lisamelton and a "popular things algorithm" would not solve the actual issue of missing posts from not particularly popular accounts who nonetheless post super interesting stuff, especially if they are not in your timezone.
For that, the best solution I found is RSS. If there's someone whose posts I don't want to miss, I just add their RSS feed to my reader, then I'm sure to see them even if I only log in ten hours later and nobody boosts it. Being in control like that is nice.
@AFoucart @lisamelton there's also the "Notify me when USER posts" button which is useful to keep track of low volume users posts.
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@DazRunner @lisamelton I'm not actually sure what point you are making when you say "I want the community to be my algorithm." You can choose who to follow for your personal feed, and in addition Trending will show you the more popular posts, and Live Feeds gives you the options of seeing your server's posts, or posts on other servers.
Thanks, Hollie. I'm a noob so i'll learn as i go.
There's a dichotomy here IMO. Part of being in a community means you surrender some control and allow that community to make some decisions on your behalf. For the greater good.
Segmenting users into filter bubbles algorithmically on SM has had a negative impact on society. And is a tool of manipulation.
How about a feed filter though? Eg. Only show posts on my feed that have received some engagement etc.
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@lisamelton but we do have an automatic default feed algorithm!
That the default automatic feed algorithm is "posts of accounts you follow in chronological order" is beside the point, it's still an algorithm, it's still the default, and it's still automatic.
@pmb00cs @lisamelton It's a bit pedantic but I wanted to make the same point. I know people are afraid of slippery slopes but algorithms aren't inherently evil. Presumably the current algorithm also ranks posts that were reported a number of times lower than others? If not, I'd say that would be quite a sensible use of the technology.
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@Atoro @lisamelton @hypebot ... but can it only do this by violating the 'trust' of the users who don't want their posts used for such things?
I should be clear that I am /not/ one of those users, but I know they exist.
@mikebabcock @lisamelton @hypebot if someone doesn’t want their toots processed by that bot, they can use the #nobot hashtag in their profile. Or just block the user. I find that acceptable. Maybe their should be a native mastodon privacy setting for bot control, but as long as that doesn’t exist, I am personally fine with that.
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Thanks, Hollie. I'm a noob so i'll learn as i go.
There's a dichotomy here IMO. Part of being in a community means you surrender some control and allow that community to make some decisions on your behalf. For the greater good.
Segmenting users into filter bubbles algorithmically on SM has had a negative impact on society. And is a tool of manipulation.
How about a feed filter though? Eg. Only show posts on my feed that have received some engagement etc.
@DazRunner @lisamelton The feed filter that you are describing is the Trending feed, and you can visit that at any time.
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Recently I read a post by some jackhole techbro who wants a default automatic feed algorithm here just like Big Social
.Opening the door for AI bullshit is not even the worst part of this idea.
Folks, all of us here ARE the algorithm. Personal curation is a feature, not a bug.
We make Mastodon awesome by following people and boosting what we find meaningful, significant or just cool. That's how it works.
Let's keep making friends. Let's keep sharing. Let's keep Mastodon alive. Together.
@lisamelton
Amen, sister, Amen. -
@pmb00cs @lisamelton It's a bit pedantic but I wanted to make the same point. I know people are afraid of slippery slopes but algorithms aren't inherently evil. Presumably the current algorithm also ranks posts that were reported a number of times lower than others? If not, I'd say that would be quite a sensible use of the technology.
@TimothyRoes @lisamelton I would like to point out that when I joined Facebook that was the default feed algorithm, when I joined Twitter that was the default feed algorithm. Now them changing that default wasn't why I left those platforms, but it certainly didn't help.
