Post by @rolle@mementomori.social

RE: https://mementomori.social/@rolle/116806833065363287

Interestingly, Meta has been implementing a "tune your algorithm" type of feature, which is surprisingly user-focused. You can select the topics you want to see more of and what you want to see less of, mute words, add your preferences... of course, Meta has their own agenda and wants you to get as hooked as possible so they can make money off you as a product, but I like the idea that it is not completely opaque.

I am building something similar in my Mastodon instance but truly without any monetary goal.

For algorithm haters out there, remember that reverse chronological order is an algorithm too. If you like getting video recommendations on YouTube, PeerTube, or music recommendations in a playlist, that is an algorithm too. I honestly do not understand all the algorithm hate when it is focused on the tech itself rather than commercialism.

The capitalist nature of algorithms is, of course, something to stand against, since it works by exploiting users. But if it is for user benefit without any rotten backstory, algorithms in my world are great.

#Algorithm #TheAlgorithm #AlgorithmicFeed #ForYou #FYP #Meta #Fediverse

Rolle Laukkarinen

@rolle@mementomori.social 3 weeks ago

A tip for users of our experimental instance mementomori.social:

You can enable the algorithmic "For you" feed from the top right corner of the Home feed. When you turn it on, it will instantly switch to a ranked feed that prioritizes posts based on who you follow, who you comment on, and what you like or boost. If you also toggle on "Include posts from people you don't follow," you'll see trending content across the Fediverse based on your interests.

Unlike Trending tab, For you -feed is personal. The logic is similar to pre-Musk Twitter but user-focused and not corporate-owned.

The Trending tab remains unchanged, and /explore shows posts from roughly the past 6-12 hours, with a strong focus on the most recent ones. A post that gets massive engagement might stick around a bit longer, but most cycle out within half a day. Your own For you page changes every time you click the menu, refresh the page, or return.

This is ongoing, experimental work. The PR draft and source code are available here: https://github.com/mementomori-social/mastodon/pull/4

#MementoMoriSocial #Mastodon #MastoAdmin #OpenSource #BuildInPublic #Algorithm #AlgorithmicFeed #Algorithms

#foryou #fyp #thealgorithm #algorithmicfeed #algorithm #meta #fediverse

Neurotransmitter

@Neurotransmitter@social.tchncs.de 1 hour ago

@rolle make it visible...

Rolle Laukkarinen

@rolle@mementomori.social 1 hour ago

@Neurotransmitter It is fully out in the open and completely visible: https://github.com/mementomori-social/mastodon/pull/4

But if you mean "make it configurable", the answer is intentionally not right now. It is too much work at the moment. People can choose not to use it - it is off and opt-in by default on our instance.

Feel free to send in a contribution 👍️

GitHub

Add opt-in ranked home timeline (experimental) by rollecode · Pull Request #4 · mementomori-social/mastodon

Algorithmic home feed as an opt-in experiment. Same idea as Twitter's open sourced ranking pipeline (candidates, score, mix) but stripped to what a single instance actually needs. Chronological...

Turre

@Turre@mementomori.social 2 hours ago

@rolle Nod, I too find it sad and ridiculous that the perfectly good and innocent computer science term has been abducted to mean some Evil Corp thing.

Without algorithms, there are no computers. It's that elemental. That the capitalist social media design the algorithms for selecting content to users to be abusive intentionally - to get you hooked, enraged, whatever - that needs a different word. Abuserithm? Leachorithm?

Although of course by now it's probably too late. I wonder what they teach new CS students nowadays.

Thar🇪🇺

@tharkonen@mastodon.social 14 minutes ago

@Turre @rolle I really, really like "abuserithm". Describes the objective simply perfectly.

Johann z. Baag (ej af Puss-B.)

@zenfin@mementomori.social 2 hours ago

@rolle They’re like chemicals.

More algorithms and chemicals plz! (And better!)

william.maggos

@wjmaggos@liberal.city 2 hours ago

@rolle

I'm an algo hater. I do NOT like the recommendations in YouTube, Spotify etc either. Basically commercialism, but ultimately it's other people determining what we pay attention to, like an ad. That's bad individually but very bad at a societal level, letting others decide that for the masses. While the owners might disagree, this allows them to push their worldview on us.

User controlled algos are ok but will probably get corrupted. Reverse chrono is an algo like atheism is a religion.

Rolle Laukkarinen

@rolle@mementomori.social 1 hour ago

@wjmaggos But that is not hating the algorithm. If you truly are an algorithm hater, you would hate all technology. All computing and computers are ultimately based on algorithms.

william.maggos

@wjmaggos@liberal.city 1 hour ago

@rolle

fine, I'm an attention algo hater. And I recognize that radio and TV stations are such an algo. In a sense, those institutions are algos too. It comes back to increasing how many people decide what we pay attention to. That's what early humans with a word of mouth experience had. We all collectively decided what info, ideas and art to pass on. Mass media, now also algo media, where fewer people decide for many, is the problem. Biases what can go viral in culture. Fedi can fix it.

Rolle Laukkarinen

@rolle@mementomori.social 54 minutes ago

@wjmaggos I dislike today's phenomenon where something online is valued only by the size of its audience, like influencer culture. Or a piece of music is considered worthless unless it has listeners. But as an entrepreneur, I also have another side to this, which is my livelihood. Of course I want profit and money, if it comes from marketing, fine; if it comes from being who I am, even better.

However, when these things get mixed up and distorted, and people no longer recognize what feels natural online anymore, that is what I have a problem with. I think we are talking about pretty much the same thing, but your frustration maybe runs deeper. For me, it is kind of a balance between the two.

Algorithms itself are not a problem or a solution. They have their shades of grey. When done right, they can be great. I noticed that I have become so accustomed to the "For you" feed that I wanted to build one for myself here. And it works beautifully. Nobody needs to suffer from it. You do you and I do me.

1 more replies

Emil Jacobs - Collectifission

@collectifission@greennuclear.online 2 hours ago

@rolle sounds interesting. How would I implement this on my instance?

Rolle Laukkarinen

@rolle@mementomori.social 1 hour ago

@collectifission I think simply merging the PR to your fork and rebuilding should be enough. I think at least @troed, and maybe @cadusilva or @michael have implemented it. There's also a Docker image and source available from our instance in case you want to implement all the custom features we have, similar to how glitch-soc does it. https://help.mementomori.social/mementomori.social/instance-features

@ikkeT and @michael can help with Docker things. I'm more of a source code type of person.