this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2022
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On Mastodon and Algorithms - Jayeless.net (www.jayeless.net)
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Is this sort of thing inevitable? The fact we feel compelled to bring algorithmic content sorting into the fediverse says something about the way we use social media. The author mentions that reverse-chronological timelines make you feel like you need to spend hours scrolling through much of the same thing to make sure you're not falling behind on the internet. The other side of that is, why is it that we're all spending so much time dumping the same thing into each other's timelines? (I'm at least a little aware that I'm probably the nth person you've seen posting about this or a similar problem in the last week)

My solution to the timeline getting too fast has always been to unfollow/mute people, but maybe that's getting impractical.

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

@anova I don't think it is inevitable for algorithms to be implemented, but it's true that algorithms prioritizing "important", relevant, and less spammy content can be useful. I think if we're going to do that we need to consider what metrics are going in to the algorithm - how we can avoid encouraging exploitation of this algorithm, and how we can ensure that the algorithm represents what users want to see rather than what makes the company the most ad money. Twitter's algorithm was exploitative and hurt its users massively, compounded by the fact that it stopped remembering preferences for a chronological timeline; it's a primary reason I stopped being regularly involved in the platform, the timeline stopped making any logical sense and was filled with messages I didn't care about.

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

What do you think of @[email protected] 's idea of allowing user-configurable algorithms? It sounds like it might be difficult to implement well but that could be a more individual approach, and it'd help to deal with people exploiting the algorithm. The biggest issue I see with it is that it could just end up streamlining the existing problem of algorithmically generated echo chambers. I can't imagine a single algorithm that generates timelines for all user that wouldn't be exploitable, though maybe democratic control of how it works would compensate for that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

@jonny @anova I like the idea of user-configurable algorithms, and I think a key point is to ensure that the algorithm is open-source and not an AI black box. Good point about echo chambers, though; I'm not sure where the balance is between freedom of attention and exposing people to a diversity of ideas.