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”.

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?

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.

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.

I think it will be pretty much I possible to create an unbiased recommendation algorithm without creating echo chambers.

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.

If your instance was set up a while ago and nginx was used the config might need updating because the old config wasn’t compatible with kbin. After that it worked well for me. The only thing I notice is that old posts are not synced after subscribing. Only new posts get added.