Arvind NarayananNov 4, 2022

Algorithms aren't the enemy. Chronological feeds don't scale and the signal-to-noise ratio will plummet if this ever gets popular. The real problems with today's algorithmic feeds are non-transparency, lack of choice, and optimizing for engagement instead of healthy discourse.

Open-source is a perfect opportunity to fix all this. Have there been any efforts to create a Mastodon instance with a (community governed) ranking algorithm? Is that technically feasible? Or is the idea simply anathema?

Show threadMichael EkstrandNov 4, 2022
@randomwalker I have been toying with the idea of building an opt-in Mastodon recommender (starting with who-to-follow, but hopefully timeline ranking too), then having my students build algorithms for it when I teach recommender systems in the spring. But unfortunately I don't know that I actually have the bandwidth for the engineering work to make it possible.
Show threadGiovanni Beltrame
@mdekstrand @randomwalker I recently discovered the grouping mechanism, and I speculate it might do the job if one can reasonably make a dynamic group that acts as the ranker.
Nov 5, 2022 at 9:07pmWeb