#Bluesky now allows you to “choose your own algorithm”.

Which sounds “incredible” and “sci-fi”—but it really isn’t.

What it essentially does is give a Twitter-like service Reddit-like features.

As an aside, now I’m wondering why Reddit doesn’t offer an alternative web front-end to make it more Twitter-like!

But how does this apply to the
#ActivityPub flavour of the #Fediverse? This feature now makes me realize how big a deal Fediverse groups are going to be, and if I were @Gargron, I’d be even more excited about rolling out Mastodon’s group functionality.

Because while groups aren’t exactly relevancy algorithms, once you add a “New”, “Hot”, “Best”, etc. feed to groups, now you’re in business.

I don’t know if choosing your own algorithm is the killer feature that Bluesky thinks it is. My experience is that most people hate choice. Nevertheless, I still thinks it’s important.

@[email protected]
@atomicpoet @Gargron @[email protected]

I don’t like algorithms much, because every algorithm becomes a game and some clout-chasers are very good at games and even cheat. The Bluesky’s "12 likes to be on what’s hot" feed was already pretty terrible. You just need 12 friends to get in there. The new "what’s hot" is also terrible, because it’s a reddit-like hot algorithm except for the entire platform not for a group and once a post get there it can stay on top for the entire day. It’s basically reddit karma farming. 0% chronological (But understand why people with large following like this)

I also don’t like the idea of likes becoming a measurement of a post’s worth. On mastodon likes are benevolent and boost is the actual "I want more people to see this" button. What about emoji reactions? If I react with a
🫠 is this supposed to be a like? A dislike? To me the worth of a fediverse post is by the number of boosts and I hope it stays this way.

What I PARTICULARLY don’t like is the way bluesky implemented their custom feeds. It’s not a plugin written in AIscript running on your instance server nor on your client. It’s literally some random dude’s server running unknown code. Meaning on top of trusting the software running on your client, the software running on your instance server (PDS), the software running on the BGS (which is a separate service) you know have to trust N services offering you N different "custom" feeds. "Make your own feed" doesn’t mean select a few keywords, it means run an entire server on your own.

But still, we can learn from bluesky. Algorithms aren’t all bad and we can have more than just chronological orders. The Mutuals feed is very popular and simple to add, the catch-up feed is interesting when people login only once a day and don’t want to scroll their entire timeline since yesterday, etc. We can add a little bit more choice in our timelines.

But I still I prefer my antennas than having to ask a third-party dev, please can you make a custom feed following this keyword for me? This isn’t freedom of choice to the users...
@matthieu_xyz @Gargron @[email protected] This is a good summary, and explains everything well. My takeaway is that we can do it better with less resources and with more transparency. Antennas really are a better option.

@atomicpoet @fediversenews @matthieu_xyz I wrote this thread about sorting algorithmn for Mastodon 3 years ago and it got a lot of interest and replies.

https://mstdn.fr/@narF/104887310401243826

It's sad that there isn't an implementation of it yet.

narF 🎲 (@[email protected])

I want to talk about algorithms on social media. Specifically about how mastodon and the Fediverse often write on their presentation page or feature list about how they "don't have algorithms" because they display posts in chronological order. 👇A thread

mstdn
@atomicpoet @fediversenews @matthieu_xyz Can Antennas on Calckey do what I'm describing in that thread?
@narF @[email protected] @[email protected] This is what the antenna creation UI looks like. It’s nothing like a bluesky custom feed that can detect pictures of cat with AI. But it’s much stronger than just following a hashtag.

So strong that users are even afraid of people finding their post when they thought they were relatively hidden and hard to find.
@matthieu_xyz @atomicpoet @Gargron @[email protected] good post, I agree.

I do like the feed that just got added today on bluesky, that shows the first post of new users signing up. That might be helpful for onboarding new people, and something that fedi can probably take some inspiration from.