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I think most projects pride themselves on not having something like that. It would be hard to create an algorithm that doesn’t create the problems that we know of commercial platforms (echo chambers, biases, and the likes). There used to be simpler algorithms on the platforms but then people got stuck in racist or conspiracy stuff. And then they tried to tweak it and then people started to complain that the platforms are biased. You can’t win. It maybe harder to curate what to follow on your own but at least there is not some algorithm that influences what you see and what you like and what you think.
How about give the users control over the algorithm? Akin to Lemmy, where we can at least choose one of many sorting algorithms, including chronological. But I only use ‘New’ when checking out specific communities. For the actual feed, I very much prefer an algorithmic approach.
I don’t see it as the platform’s responsibility to “create an unbiased recommendation algorithm without creating echo chambers”. Give me the means to prevent that, yes. But please let me decide for myself wether I want a wide or narrow range of topics, and which flavor.
Totally agree with that, Lemmy is the value proposition for just that.
What do recommendations look like for you? Because platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc. don’t just recommend based on what all people like but they recommend based on what is trending in your realm of interests. That means that they create a profile of you. Even if you could create something similar to that without being invasive it’s still very vulnerable towards people gaming the system. Big companies like Google or Facebook try to tweak their algorithms constantly so that they don’t get exploited and they still don’t always succeed. An algorithm makes the whole system much more vulnerable towards things like disinformation, conspiracy theories and the likes.
Manipulation is a strong point, however, I think if you have the choice between several algorithms, manipulation should be pretty hard.
What are these algorithms you talk about? Because many people are not that much into tech the word “algorythm” has become very abstract. A recommendation algorythm is a piece of code that orders things according to specific parameters. What are the parameters that you want your timeline to be sorted by? I want to understand I like my timeline chronological. You want it to be sorted by what is interesting. How do you deterine what is interesting to you?
Currently, we have these: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-docs/blob/main/src/users/03-votes-and-ranking.md
People don’t need to science it. They can choose different modes from the dropdown, stick with what they like for whatever reason, or play around. Or even ignore the option altogether. Personally, I use ‘New Comments’ as my default, inspect communities with ‘New’, and occasionally switch to ‘Hot’, ‘Active’ and ‘Top X Hours’ when I’m looking for more.
In terms of manipulation, I guess the biggest lever here is to which instance I log in, followed by which communities I subscribe to. This heavily influences the type of content I see, the political leaning, and things like that. How this content is sorted into a feed is a minor decision in comparison.
Is it possible we talk about different things. OP was talking about Microblogging (e.g. Mastodon). Here on lemmy/kbin that is totally different. It wouldn’t work without it. I don’t think this style would really work with microblogging though I have nothing against trying that. I was more thinking about real recommender algorithms like “Things you might like”.
Admittedly, I spent very little time on Mastodon. But as I remember it, there is something like a ‘home feed’. And I also remember only seeing the most recent entries at the top, which is not necessarily what I would have found the most interesting. For example, I think I’d be at least equally interested in entries with engagement, where people talk about the post. Which sometimes requires some time to pass.
You’re right I lost track about the precise topic, sorry for that.
Ok ok fine. I get it. I still think it would be cool. Maybe some time in the future when the Fediverse is further developed as a whole.
I think it will be pretty much I possible to create an unbiased recommendation algorithm without creating echo chambers.
Do you mean “impossible”?
I think it doesn’t have to be. The crucial thing is that you have the option to simply change instances if you don’t like the algorithm that comes with it. The scholar Katharina Zweig introduced danger-levels of algorithms. The danger level is determined by A.) whether you can easily get an alternative for the given algorithm without investing too much and B.) which has low negative impact in case the algorithm is bad.
She would categorizes curating-algorithms in social media therefore as low as long as there are enough alternatives that you can easily switch to and I would agree with that.
Edit: The categorization was about algorithm-decision-systems but it can be applied for algorithms in general
I doubt you would find an algorithm per instance. The question is what kind of recommendations would like? What is the kind of content you want to push and how do you decide to push it. I am genuinely wondering because even when I used Twitter, I always used the chronological view so I’m wondering what you are missing.
@blue_berry Friendica does have both a chronological feed (that can be sorted by creation date of the post, the date that the post arrived at the system or the date that thread was changed the last time) and also some algorithmic feeds (called “channel”) that displays posts of their followers based on some rules. Also there are channels with posts of all kind that are discussed a lot in the last times. Another channel shows content from people that are followed by the people that I follow. Other ones are language based, etc.
This is a brand new feature and will be part of the upcoming release. Of course the plan is that the user can tweak the rules.
That sounds really interesting, I will definitely check it out (once its out).
Mammoth has a For You tab and I found it quite useful
That’s a client for Mastodon, right?
Yes its so you can use any mastodon account
Is it a for you based on your instance or based across all mastadon instances?
Across all instances
Kbin can do Microblogs, but I’m not sure what you mean with “alternative to chronological feed”?
Some rudimentary algorithm that curates the posts somehow in a more exciting way than strict chronological order
Define “curate” and “exciting”? How would you want them sorted?
I mean, there’s sorting by “hot” which takes comments and votes into account, but beyond that I’d very much prefer all the algorithm fuckery to stay well clear of the fediverse, because it inevitably leads to everything going to shit. It invites “gaming the system”, and before you know it your entire feed is full of ads, bots and iNfLuEnCeRs.
So, anyway, Hot might be exciting. ;)
https://github.com/pkreissel/foryoufeed
Heard it works well. Didn’t try myself, though.
I’d also be interested in this but where you could toggle which feed you wanted. I don’t think personalization would be possible by user because that requires excessive tracking and would not be welcomed but maybe there’s another way to do it with boosts or other counts.