I sometimes see people on Fediverse speak as if there is something inherently wrong about the idea of content sorting and filtering algorithms.
There is a massive amount of content today and limited time. Content algorithms could provide the benefit of helping us sort content based on what we want. The most he urgent news, the most informative articles, the closest friends, etc. This might have some similarities with how Facebook and others do it, but it is not the same. Big social media algorithms have one goal: maximizing their profit. One metric for that is maximizing screen on-time and scrolling.
Personally, I’ve been developing an algorithm to help me sift through the content I get on my RSS reader, as there’s a lot of content I’m uninterested in. This algorithm would save me time, whereas those of Twitter and Facebook maximize my wasted time.
In my opinion, algorithms should be:
opt-in: off my default, and the user is given a clear choice to change it
transparent: the algorithm should be transparent about its goals and inner workings
A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.
Fediverse is a portmanteau of “federation” and “universe”. It is a common, informal name for a federation of social network servers whose main purpose is microblogging, the sharing of short, public messages.
Yep. Lemmy feed for example is algorithmic
Not really unless you have a really broad definition of algorithmic. It is just up and downvotes (and personalized subscriptions).
It uses an algorithm to determine score for sorting. What is your definition of algorithm then?
Of course some math s doing to be involved, but that is not what people mean when they talk about algorithmic content curation on social media.