6 ms·

> For example, posts that contain both #jenniferlawrence and #hoodedeyes would be what you are looking for I mean, not to overwork it, but in this example, thi

by kixiQu 4y ago

> For example, posts that contain both #jenniferlawrence and #hoodedeyes would be what you are looking for I mean, not to overwork it, but in this example, this isn't accurate: I just want pictures of Jennifer Lawrence, not the much smaller slice of content where the poster had her particular eye shape in mind. Also, I don't want to only "end up seeing" pictures of Jennifer Lawrence in my main feed, I want to be able to go find them when I want them. Instagram's ontology is designed to not make this possible, because everything about it is meant to facilitate tube-feeding, and that is why I feel so strongly that it is trash. (We could also talk about how similar phenomena manifested elsewhere: the #goth tag on Tumblr in my Tumblr days was unusable because of the quantity of non-goths looking at a lowkey photo and deciding that was the best descriptor – so the actual #goth content was found in .... #gothgoth. And if you're wondering if this was discovered and subsequently chased out to #gothgothgoth, You Have Understood The Problem)

errantmind 4y ago
Right, but it was never meant to specialize in user-directed filtering and discovery to the level you are describing. To your second point, every social context that gets 'cool' eventually gets LCDed into mediocrity (even HN). You have to outrun the noise, as you described in your #gothgothgoth example
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  >Right, but it was never meant to specialize in user-directed filtering and discovery to the level you are describing. this, and what you said earlier >Isolated hashtags on IG were often not useful for finding specific content. To find what you want you'd need an interface to a page that showed posts across multiple hashtags which they didn't provide. forgive my naivete but I wonder exactly what could possibly have been good about their tag system if it didn't help users narrow down to just the content they wanted?
  - errantmind 4y ago
    You ever just put a show on or pick up a book spontaneously, without really having a particular show or book in mind before you started? This is kind of like that, call it 'directed spontaneity'. You open the app to see interesting stuff, but you don't know what exactly that might be in advance. The app learns some basic stuff about you using your interactions on content then tries to guess. You either like the stuff the app shows you or you don't. The hashtag system was very good at filtering content to what you generally like in your feed and the Explore view, but it wasn't set up for you to fully guide your own experience in search of very particular content using individual hashtags.
- kixiQu 4y ago
  > Right, but it was never meant to specialize in user-directed filtering and discovery We agree: > Instagram's ontology is designed to not make this possible, because everything about it is meant to facilitate tube-feeding So as the user-directed ontology component of the IG ecosystem, it's trash, and I will die mad about it. > every social context that gets 'cool' eventually gets LCDed into mediocrity (even HN) I want to distinguish my complaint here from a gatekeeper's lament. This isn't about, say, nu-goth showing up and coming to eat the fashion scene, as Tumblr did indeed instigate. I'm talking about pictures being tagged with "goth" that no one looking for "goth" content would consider relevant (a closeup of coral red lipstick, say), but which would show up as "top #goth posts" because they were highly engaged with in the other contexts people saw them. (To a lesser extent, also Etsy spam in #gothgoth, but this is more what you're talking about)
  - ec2y 4y ago
    I just want to say that your comments made me laugh super hard, but truly get to the heart of why a blunt engagement metric is a trash metric. (I also study gatekeeping and intermediaries, so it’s interesting from that angle also.)
    - kixiQu 4y ago
      Some day some master's student is going to write a thesis on the history of the #witchcraft tag on Tumblr and how it functioned as a social space and I only hope my username does not appear. :D
  - errantmind 4y ago
    We agree on the intended use of the app being more about passive consumption of a feed of interesting content, not active, thorough exploration of particular topics. I'm not sure why you think the whole hashtag system was trash because of this one aspect. Most of the evidence I see is contrary to your statements. To reiterate, the strength of the tagging system is the relationship between the tags you interact with, not any given individual tag. Also, individual tags are not exclusively literal descriptors for their content. They may be, or they may be used like: 'people who like #jenniferlawrence will also like #...'
- redbar0n 4y ago
  >To your second point, every social context that gets 'cool' eventually gets LCDed into mediocrity (even HN). The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs by Andrew Chen illustrates and details this very well: https://andrewchen.com/the-law-of-shitty-clickthroughs/ https://andrewchen.com/the-law-of-shitty-clickthroughs/
pjc50 4y ago
> And if you're wondering if this was discovered and subsequently chased out to #gothgothgoth, You Have Understood The Problem Excellently put. To me, it seems that the problem is that tagging is adversarial in any system where spamming can be rewarded.
- kixiQu 4y ago
  Yeah – I'm not even sure we can call it adversarial where there seems to be no signal for relevancy. I'm sure there are "good" reasons for not having one (where by "good" I mean "profitable") but oof it sucks (esp. relative to the much simpler Web2.0 organization of e.g. Reddit)

by kixiQu 4y ago

errantmind 4y ago

Right, but it was never meant to specialize in user-directed filtering and discovery to the level you are describing. To your second point, every social context that gets 'cool' eventually gets LCDed into mediocrity (even HN). You have to outrun the noise, as you described in your #gothgothgoth example

bryanrasmussen 4y ago
>Right, but it was never meant to specialize in user-directed filtering and discovery to the level you are describing. this, and what you said earlier >Isolated hashtags on IG were often not useful for finding specific content. To find what you want you'd need an interface to a page that showed posts across multiple hashtags which they didn't provide. forgive my naivete but I wonder exactly what could possibly have been good about their tag system if it didn't help users narrow down to just the content they wanted?
- errantmind 4y ago
  You ever just put a show on or pick up a book spontaneously, without really having a particular show or book in mind before you started? This is kind of like that, call it 'directed spontaneity'. You open the app to see interesting stuff, but you don't know what exactly that might be in advance. The app learns some basic stuff about you using your interactions on content then tries to guess. You either like the stuff the app shows you or you don't. The hashtag system was very good at filtering content to what you generally like in your feed and the Explore view, but it wasn't set up for you to fully guide your own experience in search of very particular content using individual hashtags.
kixiQu 4y ago
> Right, but it was never meant to specialize in user-directed filtering and discovery We agree: > Instagram's ontology is designed to not make this possible, because everything about it is meant to facilitate tube-feeding So as the user-directed ontology component of the IG ecosystem, it's trash, and I will die mad about it. > every social context that gets 'cool' eventually gets LCDed into mediocrity (even HN) I want to distinguish my complaint here from a gatekeeper's lament. This isn't about, say, nu-goth showing up and coming to eat the fashion scene, as Tumblr did indeed instigate. I'm talking about pictures being tagged with "goth" that no one looking for "goth" content would consider relevant (a closeup of coral red lipstick, say), but which would show up as "top #goth posts" because they were highly engaged with in the other contexts people saw them. (To a lesser extent, also Etsy spam in #gothgoth, but this is more what you're talking about)
- ec2y 4y ago
  I just want to say that your comments made me laugh super hard, but truly get to the heart of why a blunt engagement metric is a trash metric. (I also study gatekeeping and intermediaries, so it’s interesting from that angle also.)
  - kixiQu 4y ago
    Some day some master's student is going to write a thesis on the history of the #witchcraft tag on Tumblr and how it functioned as a social space and I only hope my username does not appear. :D
- errantmind 4y ago
  We agree on the intended use of the app being more about passive consumption of a feed of interesting content, not active, thorough exploration of particular topics. I'm not sure why you think the whole hashtag system was trash because of this one aspect. Most of the evidence I see is contrary to your statements. To reiterate, the strength of the tagging system is the relationship between the tags you interact with, not any given individual tag. Also, individual tags are not exclusively literal descriptors for their content. They may be, or they may be used like: 'people who like #jenniferlawrence will also like #...'
redbar0n 4y ago
>To your second point, every social context that gets 'cool' eventually gets LCDed into mediocrity (even HN). The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs by Andrew Chen illustrates and details this very well: https://andrewchen.com/the-law-of-shitty-clickthroughs/ https://andrewchen.com/the-law-of-shitty-clickthroughs/

pjc50 4y ago

> And if you're wondering if this was discovered and subsequently chased out to #gothgothgoth, You Have Understood The Problem Excellently put. To me, it seems that the problem is that tagging is adversarial in any system where spamming can be rewarded.

kixiQu 4y ago
Yeah – I'm not even sure we can call it adversarial where there seems to be no signal for relevancy. I'm sure there are "good" reasons for not having one (where by "good" I mean "profitable") but oof it sucks (esp. relative to the much simpler Web2.0 organization of e.g. Reddit)