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?
Responses to some frequent comments:
* I'm certainly not suggesting that algorithmic feeds should be imposed on everyone! Choice is great. I recognize that many, perhaps most current Mastodon users like chronological feeds.
* "Reverse chronological" is an algorithm, albeit a simple one. It's currently the only option. Chronological feeds are not normatively neutral. There is, unfortunately, no neutral way to design social media. https://mastodon.social/@randomwalker/109308664849924122
* "Mastodon doesn't need to become popular." Sure. But like it or not, it's getting more popular, and many of the newcomers have a different culture and expectations. Eugen Rochko: "People who are arriving now have as much right to be here and bring their own culture as the ones who came before them." https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/109323118267580967
Again, all I'm suggesting is choice, and I thought Mastodon is all about choice.
* What do I mean by chronological feeds don't scale? A few things.
1. There's a lot of social pressure to follow people (especially people you know). Old-timers here are comfortable with following a small set of people, but most newcomers aren't. For those people, pretty soon the feed becomes a firehose.
2. Even in a mostly-chronological feed, some ranking would be really nice. *Not* necessarily by popularity, but if there are 15 posts by the same person I don't want those to be the first 15.
Amusingly, this thread is getting boosted a lot today, a couple of weeks after I first posted it. That's another difference between chronological feeds and Twitter's algorithm (which heavily emphasizes immediacy).
But—and this is the point of the thread—imagine all the interesting things you could do with a tunable algorithm. You could even let the recency preference depend on the type of content! You could customize it to show you news only if recent, but educational content regardless of age.
@randomwalker These are important points, and I agree with most of them. My Twitter engagement was better under reverse-chronological sorting, but you rightly point out that that's still suboptimal.
When I say "the algorithm" for Twitter, I mean the machine learning recommendation engine. Reverse-chronological is an algorithm, but it's deterministic.
Having worked in various AI-related fields for years, I think it's important for the algorithm we use here to be predictable and understandable.
@randomwalker hi! Reverse timeline fan here -- not bc it's the best, but bc the alternative was much much worse in my case.
You're suggesting users should tune the algorithm. Fine.
On twitter, the algo tunes the user. Unacceptable.
The solution is getting back to personal web sites
Aggregation and curation would be done by hand, by people in telegram chats
@randomwalker not sure if you’ve seen it, but the renewed interest could also be because of this useful thread and discussion from @jon, an ex-Twitter designer
4/ I remember when we moved from strict reverse-chron (which 97% struggle with) to "You might like" prompts (which 3% struggle with) and hearing from the VERY LOUD minority that we were destroying Twitter. But we saw as the 97% had a much better time. We saw that every step forward we took (I have a whole presentation on this) was helping people more and more. The data told us we were making a better product. And that reverse-chron kinda sucks. For most people.
Agree that a customizable and/or community-governed algorithm would be helpful
I found Twitter's algorithm to be "too fast", in that either a tweet got picked up right away or it would fall into obscurity.
I actually like the speed of the LinkedIn algorithm, which serves up content from people you follow for up to weeks after the initial post
@randomwalker Interesting. The algorithm was awful for me, especially when trying to find new research/ers to follow. Twitter was only useable when I switched to reverse chronological order. Every time I logged into a new device or my preferences got wiped, it was back to chaos and often content I didn't need to see (stuff that was posted to make people angry for example), even though I muted judiciously.
I think I'd much rather try following hashtags first, personally.
@randomwalker I don’t fundamentally disagree with the idea of algorithmic options for sorting feeds. However, I think there is opportunity to embrace a different culture, rather than falling back on our conditioned understanding of how social media should function.
Re 1: Maybe that social pressure isn’t healthy, and the current feeds illustrate why and discourage it.
Re 2: Maybe a soft explainer on how to thread with unlisted posts will help that person post more consciously.
@randomwalker I’d like to have clients make “toots” (only) the default and “replies too” an option. That would manage the chronological timeline for now.
One day we may need more but again easier to do just client side.
@randomwalker
is there not a parallel here to epidemics and infection control - the individual risk framing of Covid misses the population level impact; likewise, the focus on “individual choice” of algorithms misses the discourse level impacts this might have?
it’s a complex system, changing the individual agent rules stands every chance of changing the global system dynamics as well
that would make it more than ‘just’ a matter of individual choice, no?
@randomwalker the fun thing here is: if you want it - make it.
Chronological feeds might not scale - question is: do they need to? If my radio is getting at my nerves I turn it off...
@randomwalker I'm glad that we can reopen the conversation about algorithm. I agree that the chronological order that sort our timeline today is still technically "an algorithm". And that it would be nice to offer user with various ways to sort their timeline.
Just like I can sort my emails by date, by sender, by subject, etc. I'd like to be able to do the same here.
@randomwalker Me personally, I would like a way to bring to the top my friends who post very rarely. So, basically to sort my timeline by how long since their last post.
Yes, we can use lists or the bell button, but that's not exactly it...
Would be nice to have a way to build our own sorting rules! 😄
@randomwalker "People who are arriving now have as much right to be here and bring their own culture as the ones who came before them."
That sounds reasonable and sensible. But it's an idea that will encounter bitter resistance.
It seems like every idea to improve Mastodon's appalling lack of functionality encounters bitter resistance.
I can certainly see the potential for some bitter conflict here.
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