March 15, 2016.
The day Instagram announced algorithmic feeds.
Their excuse: "You miss 70% of posts."
Translation: "We're taking control of what you see."
8 years later:
- 40% ads
- Only 10% of friends' posts reach you
- 60% is strangers you never chose
You didn't choose this.
Full timeline: https://snugg.social/en/blog/when-did-social-media-get-so-bad
For all the bitching I do about this place, I am particularly glad that at least the feed is stubbornly chronological.
On The Other Place, my feed got a post about severe weather that was a day late. It was super weird to see someone posting about heavy rain and look out my window to blazing sunshine.
(the problem remains that the people that talk about things that are actually happening are either not on here or not findable)
I'm super excited about the potential that the #Fediverse has to offer open source, transparent, customizable, interchangeable algorithms. I'd love to see which options work best for me and have choice!
But right now the only choice here is chronological, and that just isn't working well for me. I hope that changes, because honestly I think that would improve the experience significantly.
And no, I don't want to turn on notifications for dozens of people, I want to come here when I have some free time and see some interesting stuff, which usually is not the most recent stuff.
Chronological view is nice to have, but honestly Twitter surfaces more interesting things for me from my followers (and people they follow). It's fair to criticize it for opacity and all, but it just works better for me than this.
The main reason I'm drifting back to using #Twitter over #Mastodon isn't due to a lack of interesting people to follow here, or falling short of some critical mass, it's #TheAlgorithm. It is better.
I don't want to see the same person who just posted 4 different things all at the top of my feed, followed by someone who boosted a bunch of stuff in a row. I don't want to miss things just because I'm not online at the time they were posted.
@schwa
An interesting thing is that the thread repeatedly talks about user’s “happiness” without mentioning what they actually measured and how. Knowing for-profit corporates, “happiness” was most likely measured along some axis where it just so happens to coincide with “tendency to make users addicted and doomscrolling”.
Sugar cubes will give me happiness and keep me coming back for more, as long as I don’t notice the rot it’s creating in me long term.
Sammiej
Luigi de Guzman
Austin Smith
beantea
Sundar
petapixel (unofficial)
