A reminder that on Mastodon you are the algorithm. If you’re seeing content you don’t want, block or filter it out. Boost things you want more of. You control what you see. It’s better than trying to control others. Focus on curating the kind of feed you’re interested in.
If you don’t want to see politics, unfollow people who post or boost a lot about politics.
The #birdsite is very passive in terms of what it demands from you. Mastodon isn’t. It’s a mind shift but it’s a good one to make.
@nickapos @VickiKyriakakis nope. Mastodon, as much as I want to like it, is just less relevant. The timeline is basically dead.
Your anti-algorithmic stance, I get. You watched The Social Dilemma. This does not mean you cannot leverage technology, when not profit driven, to just provide a better news feed.
@Sarahw @VickiKyriakakis Nope. I'm supportive of the aspirations of Mastodon. The reality is, it isn't as good in some fundamental ways. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having an algorithmic timeline that attempts to provide you the information relevant to your current interests. This could be done in parallel with a linear timeline.
Furthermore, the presentation of threaded messages is strictly terrible. Instead of doing the sane thing which is to group them, it posts them reversed
@Sarahw @VickiKyriakakis this 'here you're the algorithm' sounds like the same nonsense you hear in other corners of tech. Leveraging technology to our advantage, to improve our productivity is the name of the game. Who has time for grooming their timeline? I don't. I also don't compile my own kernels anymore.
Mastodon has the advantage of not being profit driven, so it could be even better at presenting users the news/messages they want when they want it and still offer the other style.
@Sarahw Well let's start with the kernel.
Back in the day... early adopters of Linux had to spend time compiling their Linux kernel to get things just right. It was a point of pride and one of the things we loved about Linux. Do it yourself. Late 90s into the early 2000s.
The control Microsoft exerted over the tech industry was immense and it made everything a pain.
Twitter and Facebook are now turn of the century Microsoft.
@Sarahw that depends on how you define, "what we decide." Does it need to be a conscious decision every time? If I read an article, drill down, check the author's profile, respond, aren't those all indicators of my interest? If I consistently scroll past anything with cats, isn't that a choice? Good algorithms should reflect those choices.
When you ask a search engine for something you know nothing about, isn't its job to tell you what others think?
@Sarahw OH, sorry, the kernel is the lowest level part of the operating system. It facilitates the basic running of the machine by coordinating your processor, memory, hard drive, graphics card and programs. It must know how to communicate with these different components, often in a manufacturer specific way.
Picture stolen from wikipedia
@palmerc @Sarahw @VickiKyriakakis ah I missed that, my bad. I'm not familiar with the technical details but I imagine you could create a 'plugin' to control your feed. That way you don't need to change anything on the mastodon servers, and it's easier for people to experiment with different kinds of feeds.
Maybe a browser plugin could help with this?
Before this gets contentious. Pleased to make your acquaintance in this conversation.
But my point was/is for Mastodon to displace Twitter, which it needs to do, we need to offer both experiences. The realignment, in my opinion, is a developer problem, not a user one.
@Sarahw @palmerc @VickiKyriakakis Boosting toots doesn't do anything to get more of that content into your timeline. You can't control what's in your timeline, beyond the people you follow, so *they* control what's in your timeline.
Following hashtags is one way to fine tune your timeline, but again it relies on others using hashtags.
An algorithm that we could control for ourselves would be vastly superior to the basic follows in strict chrono order timeline we have now.
@Sarahw If boosting things that people you follow have posted encourages them to post more stuff like that, you could say it affects your timeline, but it still depends on them.
The whole thing with the "no algorithms" is you only see posts from people and hashtags you follow, and only ever see them in strict chronological order, minus any mutes or filters you've set up.
@VickiKyriakakis These are all important and valuable tools, no question. I do hope that people decide not to live in a nice filter bubble where the content they are seeing is always pleasant and agreeable though. We don’t grow or challenge ourselves and our beliefs this way. I do think that is important from time to time. Stay curious!
@VickiKyriakakis
I'm loving mastodon but this is a bit like saying "at our email provider *you* are the spam filter!"
Algorithms aren't bad. Twitter is bad. I wouldn't mind having a selection of algorithm options for a home screen (including the current one).
@VickiKyriakakis This.
I mainly want to use Mastodon to receive wholesome things or things of interest to me.
Not current events that give me a bad mood - I have the news for that.
But on Mastodon, I have full control over that. On #BirdSite, not so much.
If anybody is interested - about 80% of people who sign up to Mastodon only use it once, they haven’t returned since. It looks like that initial onboarding period is very important. 90% of people sign up via the Mastodon iOS and Android apps. A majority of them follow nobody and toot nothing - they probably have a blank timeline. Commercial services boost the numbers by sending push messages with suggested trends, accounts etc. That doesn’t happen here.
Why I like Mastodon!
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