Tim ☑️ 🔭🌃📷🪨🚴🌳

Anyone remember the days of #flickr #explore? 15-20yr ago I used to get excited to be in it. Now all I see is algorithm, algorithm, probably bots, algorithm.

My recent photo of Sh2-142 The Wizard nebula is doing "well" on flickr. 3815 views, 143 faves, 15 comments. Nice? But, at the risk of offending some people, every single comment there is a generic quasi-spam text that could equally apply to anything else in Explore.

Sigh.

#photography #algorithm #socialmedia #antisocialmedia #flickr

Mar 31 at 4:26pmWeb
Show threadautumnstuffMar 31
ah...really dislike algo ya... social media mainly mainstream is all about that these days...alas!
Show threadTim ☑️ 🔭🌃📷🪨🚴🌳Mar 31

@autumnstuff I remember *writing* an implementation of an "algorithm" for use with an RSS/news feed aggregator back in about 2004 or so. It was all fine and sensible and logical to me back then. The idea of "see more of what you like" still makes sense.

Think things got a bit out of hand when other people took the same idea and ran with it since though...

Show threadMyotis MyotisMar 31
Yeah, until totay I was five times a part of explore. And it's easy to see that so many accounts comment all pics with the same words... At the first time I was exited and proud. I hadn't any idea why Flickr picked the portrait of Greyfriar's Bobby. OK, it's a legend at Edinburgh...and OK there's a nice bokeh... but I was proud. My 1st picture that received about 100 likes and invitations to join groups, but I quickly removed it from them because the spam picture commentes were coming in.

I still get a nice feeling by seeing myself featured on explore, but I now know which comments are worth responding to more specifically. But it's a bit annoying to know thre're will be the same meaningless words by the same people...
Show threadTim ☑️ 🔭🌃📷🪨🚴🌳Mar 31
@Myotis Yup. Either you spend the time getting to know folks, or you accept generic (possibly bot) response. Also, it's as much a function of how many other photos were being uploaded and gaining "velocity" at the time yours was posted - so the *other* downside of the Explore algorithm is it's basically saying your photo is better than a slow news day. How encouraging ;)
Show threadMyotis MyotisMar 31
Yeah, and this competition isn't really a competition; it's an algorithm that picks some pics from the masses (and mess). At first I thought there were some employees filtering some nice uploads out of the daily wave... I was a bit naive, I think. 😅
Show threadTim ☑️ 🔭🌃📷🪨🚴🌳Mar 31
@Myotis Quite. I think the most I've learned from flickr is that, as a photographer, audiences are fickle. The photo that's doing well in Explore this weekend garnered less than 10 likes on FB (shared personal, photo-page and relevant group), 15 faves on IG, 16 faves on here, 8 likes on bluesky... 145 faves on flickr. I know from bitter experience that none of the above translate into either photo-club competition scores or sales. ;)
Show threadMyotis MyotisMar 31
That's the thing. Every platform has its own logic and not every picture "works" nice or identical on every platform. Often its a mystery. I only upload my stuff to Flickr and (a bit more often) to Pixelfed and Pixelfed gives me a happier feeling about that photography thing and that people fave the post if they like the photo. It think there's more honesty here.
And Flickr's algorithm is the other side...!? I don't know, but to me it says absolutly nothing about a photo whetere it's explored or not. In my opinion there are too many over-processed images on Explore and I can't imagine that this is a mistake made by artful curators.