#Bluesky now allows you to “choose your own algorithm”.
Which sounds “incredible” and “sci-fi”—but it really isn’t.
What it essentially does is give a Twitter-like service Reddit-like features.
As an aside, now I’m wondering why Reddit doesn’t offer an alternative web front-end to make it more Twitter-like!
But how does this apply to the #ActivityPub flavour of the #Fediverse? This feature now makes me realize how big a deal Fediverse groups are going to be, and if I were @Gargron, I’d be even more excited about rolling out Mastodon’s group functionality.
Because while groups aren’t exactly relevancy algorithms, once you add a “New”, “Hot”, “Best”, etc. feed to groups, now you’re in business.
I don’t know if choosing your own algorithm is the killer feature that Bluesky thinks it is. My experience is that most people hate choice. Nevertheless, I still thinks it’s important.
@kainoa@atomicpoet@gabriel
Antennae are great btw, I keep adding new ones for different topics, or putting together certain commentators.
Having antennae for collecting updates from infrequently posting creators I find really very cool. So I can see new pieces art / comedy / photography / etc inside each antenna from a bunch of users I specify with include and exclude keywords or choose with media etc etc.
So I'm thinking about this in more detail, and I think the "choose your own algorithm" feature with #Bluesky is really not hard to implement, and something very doable on the #Fediverse.
What do we exactly want from an algorithm? Topics.
And we want topics sorted according to the following:
Hot
New
Top
Rising
Some people would like a "controversial" feed, but we don't have to give it to them 😉
As for "Top", we can sort it according to time parameters.
@mentallyalex Well, the way you combat bad actors is to not allow black box algorithms. Make them transparent. Basically show everyone how the sandwich is made.
My objection to algorithms isn’t that the exist. Everything in computer science has algorithms.
My objection is that Big Social dictates relevancy, and I have no say in the matter.
That said, algorithms that focus on drama and outrage should absolutely be banned even if they’re transparent.
@atomicpoet I've always envisioned it as something more personal. Like something that would go through your incoming feeds, pluck stuff out it thinks you'd like and present it in a curated feed. I was in a discussion about algorithm bots. Basically a bot that would go searching for your criteria and repost it. You could then throw it in a list or whatever. Algobots roll out!
@atomicpoet I think #kbin magazines are also a good example of something similar to Bluesky's lists because they seem to work like subreddits but every user can create one choosing several hashtags to follow (and maybe other conditions? Not sure about that) and other people can subscribe so it's an interesting mix.
@atomicpoet I Want none of this on Mastodon. If I want someone to tell me what I should be paying attention to, or what I should be afraid of, I'll talk to my wife, or turn on CNN or FOX news (the latter for the lulz, of course).
I enjoy being able to determine what I see here, as opposed to the crap-crammed-down-my-throat algorithms of other social media outlets.
Why WHY WHY would anyone want to turn Mastodon into Twitter?
@sub_o@admin Well, this is why #Calckey’s antennas are such a godsend—because they allow you to build an algorithm focused on topics. And you can be specific about source, date, arguments, etc.
@atomicpoet@sub_o
The biggest problem I see with this idea is Europe - since it's app-based, there is no way for anyone to know their data is being used in such a way, and without notice or consent, the EU is going to have some very negative things to day about it.
If it's not 100% "opt-in" to use (for example) data I have created, then there are some significant privacy concerns here.
Utilizing someone's data without notice or consent... that's treading a fine line.
@atomicpoet@sub_o
Per the announcement you re-tooted, there will be analytics, which means someone is going to be compiling that data somewhere, without the consent of anyone on Mastodon or the greater Fediverse,.
This is as much a search engine as Google is, from the description and from what I've read so far.
Mastodon users are about to be indexed, categorized, and their data stored without their consent
The current hashtag search works. We don't need an external database with metrics...
@atomicpoet How would you determine "Hot", "Top", "Rising"? Mastodon, and probably other implementations, don't federate likes. That may be true for reply counts too.
@eshep@steve@atomicpoet From what I've seen, if you and I are not on the same instance, and we both see a post from somebody on a third instance, and we both like that post, then the following happens:
OP sees both our likes. But I don't see your like, and you don't see mine, unless we use "View on original page"
@steve@uastronomer@atomicpoet Thanks, good information to know! I don't see any likes on that post. Now I'm curious how that ""feature"" works across other softwares. I wonder if it's just another case of Mastodon not playing well with others, or this is equally shit across the board. Anyone tested this thoroughly between different AP interfaces?
@eshep@steve@atomicpoet I could be wrong, but I seem to recall this being a design feature of Mastodon itself - the idea being that "Going Viral" is everything bad about social media, because disinformation and chasing clout and so on, so the idea is to hide a post's popularity so that people are less likely to respond to a message because of it's popularity and more likely to engage based on the content of the post itself.
Personally I think that this is just a feature of how human brains evaluate the importance of information, it's a feature of how we communicate, and that it is how ideas naturally propagate through societies and cultures. I think that social media merely amplifies this process, and did not create it from nothing, and that trying to solve all those problems by amputating it completely is a mistake that ends up neutering conversation completely... but what do I know, I'm just some random guy on the Internet shrug
@steve@uastronomer@atomicpoet Good point with the "viral" garbage. I don't dislike that likes wouldn't be seen by anyone other than the two parties directly involved. It makes sense when you translate it to real life conversations. Usually, people don't advertise how many people agreed with something they said, or how many nodded their head when a good point was made during conversation. But as you said, forcing people to not do things they would prefer to otherwise, never goes as expected.
If I like a Mastodon toot on Hubzilla, my like can be seen on Mastodon. Vice versa, if someone on Mastodon likes one of my Hubzilla posts or comments, I can see it. And I'm pretty sure that all this doesn't only happen on the side of Hubzilla where ActivityPub is an optional add-on.
@jupiter_rowland For example, one of @atomicpoet recent posts currently has 19 likes and 9 boosts. It displays as 0/0 on my instance. I've read that Mastodon doesn't federate "likes" because it would be too easy to spoof and some users don't like exposing that data outside their local instance. I'll look for a reference.
@atomicpoet I want no algorithm at all. Always show me the latest posts and boosts from my followees, and nothing else, in reverse chronological order.
For me, this place is all about what's happening now among the people I'm interested in. When I open Mastodon in the morning, and glance at it occasionally during the day, I want it to feel like walking into a party, sitting down and listening to the currently ongoing conversations, inferring what they're talking about, and jumping in.
I'm not interested in anything any of my followees said 10 hours ago, no matter how popular it is. Nor am I interested in anything they Favourited/Liked.
The single biggest thing that drew me to Mastodon from Twitter was exactly that: it's pre-algorithm Twitter, and the fact that Twitter got an algorithm is the worst thing that ever happened, and I've resented them ever since.
The last thing I want is for Mastodon to force an algorithm on me. :-(
@atomicpoet Interesting question. I guess because I... might use it in the future?
Or because maybe someone who shares my preference discovers the fediverse through one of those apps (just like I did with Mastodon), gets dissillusioned because it doesn't have an option to remove all algorithms from the main timeline (before they've had time to learn that there's more to the fediverse than just that app), leaves and never comes back?
@GrahamDowns *key apps have existed since 2014, two years before Mastodon arrived on the scene. And they haven't affected your use of Mastodon one bit.
Rather, the entire time you've been convinced that no "algorithms" exist on the Fediverse when this is simply not the case, and hasn't been for some time.
Stick to your preferences. There's no reason to inquire about someone else's.
@atomicpoet That's fair enough. I shouldn't've actually replied on that thread and told you my preference without being asked and without really understanding the context.
Because I don't really know much (if anything) about calckey anyway.
I apologise.
In South African English, there's this saying when someone jumps into an ongoing conversation without really understand what it's about: we say they're "picking up stompies" (a stompie is a slang term for a cigarette butt).
Apologies for picking up stompies there. I really need to work on not doing that.
@atomicpoet proudly make usage of that ever since i moved instances - to get the timeline of specific instances and users without that much clutter :bun:
As I understand them, antennas filter the Global timeline, showing only what the filter allows. By definition, unlisted notes don't appear in the global timeline, so they also won't appear in antennas.
Posts can have several levels of public visibility.
Global - everyone on every server will see it in all feeds (global, home, threads, etc.). This is usually the default visibility.
All other settings narrow the audience.
Unlisted - visible everywhere except in the Global timeline. People often set replies as unlisted to keep from cluttering the global timeline. They are visible when reading the thread.
Followers - only visible to people who follow you.
Direct - visible to people actually mentioned in the post.
I don’t like algorithms much, because every algorithm becomes a game and some clout-chasers are very good at games and even cheat. The Bluesky’s "12 likes to be on what’s hot" feed was already pretty terrible. You just need 12 friends to get in there. The new "what’s hot" is also terrible, because it’s a reddit-like hot algorithm except for the entire platform not for a group and once a post get there it can stay on top for the entire day. It’s basically reddit karma farming. 0% chronological (But understand why people with large following like this)
I also don’t like the idea of likes becoming a measurement of a post’s worth. On mastodon likes are benevolent and boost is the actual "I want more people to see this" button. What about emoji reactions? If I react with a 🫠 is this supposed to be a like? A dislike? To me the worth of a fediverse post is by the number of boosts and I hope it stays this way.
What I PARTICULARLY don’t like is the way bluesky implemented their custom feeds. It’s not a plugin written in AIscript running on your instance server nor on your client. It’s literally some random dude’s server running unknown code. Meaning on top of trusting the software running on your client, the software running on your instance server (PDS), the software running on the BGS (which is a separate service) you know have to trust N services offering you N different "custom" feeds. "Make your own feed" doesn’t mean select a few keywords, it means run an entire server on your own.
But still, we can learn from bluesky. Algorithms aren’t all bad and we can have more than just chronological orders. The Mutuals feed is very popular and simple to add, the catch-up feed is interesting when people login only once a day and don’t want to scroll their entire timeline since yesterday, etc. We can add a little bit more choice in our timelines.
But I still I prefer my antennas than having to ask a third-party dev, please can you make a custom feed following this keyword for me? This isn’t freedom of choice to the users...
@matthieu_xyz@Gargron@fediversenews This is a good summary, and explains everything well. My takeaway is that we can do it better with less resources and with more transparency. Antennas really are a better option.
@narF@atomicpoet@fediversenews This is what the antenna creation UI looks like. It’s nothing like a bluesky custom feed that can detect pictures of cat with AI. But it’s much stronger than just following a hashtag.
So strong that users are even afraid of people finding their post when they thought they were relatively hidden and hard to find.
I do like the feed that just got added today on bluesky, that shows the first post of new users signing up. That might be helpful for onboarding new people, and something that fedi can probably take some inspiration from.
It sounds like false variety of choice. If you choose mutual and your followers are in hot topic posting then you will fall back to hot topics anyhow. I’ve seen that people like to create their communities and circles were they are comfortable, heard and appreciated and stay there.
What it essentially does is give a Twitter-like service Reddit-like features.
I think I’ve been saying the fediverse needs this since I got here.
Once you take away a shadowy manipulative engagement driving algorithm, and rely entirely on reverse chron and your social network, there’s a lack of structure that is socially off putting and exclusive.
Fusing Reddit like structures with an algorithm free social network can add discoverability and engagement to a social connections first platform/ecosystem.
Topic based structures help you find people, and filtering/sorting features (which I think is a better name than algorithm which clearly now connotes manipulation) help you find what everyone is talking about so you don’t feel left out, while leaving you in control.
I hope federated groups become normal and take off as a major way of interacting in the fediverse, even to the point that instances become less significant.
When I get some time, I'll be looking into implementing an algorithm that I can apply to boosts where I can apply a positive, negative, or neutral rating to boosts from particular posters and have those surface (or sink) in my timeline based on the ranking score of the booster and boostee. I'm also looking into a "seen before" filter to skip the duplicate boosts as one goes viral.
Running a server for one, so I'm not looking to apply this to others' feeds.
@atomicpoet@Gargron@fediversenews
I totally agree. I don't like it if there is too much choice. But at the same time I think it would be great if there would be the minimum choice to activate or deactivate some kind of standard algorithm and then, if you want to, you can modify it as much as you want if you have the time to get into how to do that.
Maybe there is something like that already here that I don't know about.
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