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Is Mastodon’s strictly chronological news feed based on a wrong assumption? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The assumption is that centrally managed social media is bad because their algorithm is bad. But actually, they are bad because they are centrally managed and force one algorithm onto you. I’m not even advocating algorithm-by-choice. Even instance-specific algorithms would already work and would make the whole experience much more enjoyable and less boring. And if an instance’s algorithm(s) is too aggressive, it gets defederated. That would result in a much more exciting experience imo. And by the way: what’s the problem with getting old posts back in the timeline if it makes the overall conversation more interesting?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Probably because there exists a bit of a rift in the technical term 'algorithm' and how it's commonly used in discourse. Technically it describes both:

An open-source algorithm that assigns a simple score based on votes, score and age, where two users subscribing to the same communities will always have the same result.
A hidden algorithm that's based on an unknown amount of invisible variables, many of which are based on user-tracking, and tries to maximize time-spent at all costs.

While OP (hopefully) intended the former, most people immediately think of the latter when the term is used. Personally I'd like to see an implementation of the former as well, as a simple way to get up speed on the most important things that happened over night for example, before switching back to chronological timeline.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also:

A open, customizable algorithm that lets the user set their own priorities, and if it does any "learning" based on user actions, it's geared toward the user's priorities and easy for the user to see and correct what it's learned.

Again, key factors being: open, customizable, correctable, and serving the user, not serving the platform.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Examples of this might include prioritizing mutual followers on Mastodon, or prioritizing low-traffic subscribed communities on Lemmy so that they don't get lost in the 50 posts from the busier communities.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

On Mastodon I have used the option of "muting" users whose content I am not interested in at all. This has improved my feed a lot.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I guess I can understand how some may be concerned about the latter happening, but given mastodon is open source a hidden algorithm isn't really possible (barring some esoteric technique like code obfuscation)