6 ms·

Moving away from algorithmic curation

66 points by ingve 4y ago

082349872349872 4y ago
I have been loving newsboat; RSS FTW.
- wlesieutre 4y ago
  I'll recommend Reeder for those in the Apple ecosystem, it syncs via iCloud vs a lot of alternatives using paid services for that
sharemywin 4y ago
"It increasingly seems to me that the best things you can do with these services—recommendation engines, algorithmic timelines, and such—is (1) don’t use them when you can help it, and (2) lie to them at every opportunity. Poison the well, and don’t drink from it."
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
> Poison the well, and don’t drink from it. https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/ :)
at_a_remove 4y ago
[flagged]
- flangola7 4y ago
  No need to add unnecessary political commentary
  - at_a_remove 4y ago
    It's already in there. "How do you do this without introducing them to fascism, outrage fuel, shock content, or other trash?" and "This must include anti-fascism." If it is in there, it's fair game to respond to.
- madeofpalk 4y ago
  > Perhaps I want what someone else considers "trash" or "shock content." Possibly, but is that what you're getting? Or is the platform trying to maximise for engagement over 'content you might be interested in'? We kind of know algorithmic feeds prioritised content that generates likes and comments - that's not necessarily or 'valuable' (for whoever's definition) content but it tends to promote "shock content" for the sake of shock in order to get engagement.
  - at_a_remove 4y ago
    I remember at one point Netflix had some suggestions and I was all "Ooooh, aaah, yess!" Now I have literally no idea what they're optimizing for. It seems to be "random plus a strong suggestion of a Netflix original." Amazon Prime seems to be doing somewhat better, but now I have to wade through their branded stuff, and then Black Voices, and Still Other Voices, and then Some Other Voices, and various things that are promoted before I can get to the part where the algorithmic business kicks in. I think there's a lot of "we must override the algorithm due to Reasons" going on and that must be separated from the actual algorithmic suggestions. Conversely, I don't think you can separate engagement from "might be interested in," honestly. They're not quite synonyms but they do have a huge overlap.
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
This article is missing one important idea - yes, sure avoid algorithmic systems when we don't control the algorithm. But what I really want is an algorithmic feed option (option being important, obviously) on mastodon! If someone that I have been interacting with a lot had a popular post in the last 12 hours that I have not seen, and I have just refreshed the feed, I would love for that to be near the top. That is just one simple user story but I can imagine a wide selection of options - controllable percentage of popular posts from the rest of your server or the fediverse. Controllable percentage of posts marked important by my server admin. Controllable percentage of popular posts that people I am following have liked, even if I am not following the person. People really misdirect their grief when they say the problem is algorithms. I don't think that's really true! We all have trauma and bad memories from corporate-controlled algorithm, because that algorithm serves the needs of the corporation. Users get turned in to products to serve a for-profit system that sees us as tools to be used to extract value. And we all see those algorithms and think: "algorithms suck!" Then people make systems like mastodon with no algorithm at all - no option for one - and people bristle at the idea of an algorithm there even if it is optional. But of course it would be optional, it's mastodon! Imagine if users had a complex panel (with a few easy pre-sets to try) for various tunings to the algorithm. I genuinely believe it would make mastodon much more useful to a lot of people. I still use both twitter and mastodon and one thing that is clear is that it is very easy to see popular posts from my friends on twitter. Unfortunately there is a lot to dislike about twitter, which is why I want to see people change their thinking - what we need are algorithms we control! Open source algorithms with lots of optional tuning and adjustment and always the ability to disable it completely. There is some discussion of some of these features in the mastodon issues page. If any of you want to take a look, maybe there is some work you could help with! https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+algorithm https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%...
- iudqnolq 4y ago
  I had the impression that cross-server algorithmic discovery is impossible given Mastodon's fundamental architecture. That made me lose interest in the project.
vhcr 4y ago
I don't think the problem is algorithmic curation, the problem is _bad_ algorithmic curation. I personally find quite a lot of interesting content on YouTube's and Spotify's recommendations.
- madeofpalk 4y ago
  Specifically, it's algorithms that by design work against the user's interest in favor of the company's interest (ads, engagement bait, etc). If the developers of a social network have incentives that are more aligned with their users then it would be possible to create genuinely useful and interesting algorithmic content feeds.
  - 2358452 4y ago
    Indeed, I also think we're, as a society, missing a fundamental freedom: algorithmic transparency. That's the ability, that should be a right, to know in particular for widely available or impactful systems, what is the algorithm behind their feed, from raw data sources (and also the parameters should be public). Choices are made for us that could be very bad or against or interests (for example, to promote engagement or ad consumption), and we have pretty much no way of really knowing that. Let's fight for algorithmic transparency!
- alwaysbeconsing 4y ago
  Seconded; also I don't know exactly what Bandcamp does but I often find good new stuff to listen to through their links too.
- richardjam73 4y ago
  A lot of people don't actually know what the word algorithm means or maybe the meaning itself is changing in common parlance.
- Fomite 4y ago
  YouTube's recommendation system is notorious in several hobby communities for a tendency to point you toward alt-right content with remarkable ease.
theden 4y ago
I think the issue is algorithmic curation uses popularity/traffic/engagement as signals over the actual content. Hence why I think outrage, politics and whatnot gets promoted more often. It leaves content that isn't popular in the dust, and causes people to modify their behaviour and content to optimise for the algorithm unfortunately—I personally think it's a broken system insofar as it's optimising for engagement rather than curation. Somewhat related, but I've been using Plex's Sonic Analysis[1] and it's been great at recommending tracks in my library (large but not spotify huge), much better than the streaming services, which often would recommend popular non-independent content over gems. It's "simple" but it works—ideally services ought to let users easily tweak how content is curated for them >The Musical Universe consists of points in N-dimensional space. But what’s important is that this allows us to see how “close” anything in your library is from anything else, where distance is based on a large number of sonic elements in the audio. 1. https://support.plex.tv/articles/sonic-analysis-music/ https://support.plex.tv/articles/sonic-analysis-music/
- charcircuit 4y ago
  >over the actual content The content are features to the ranking models. Recommendation systems take both what the content is and what people liked the content into account.
NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
The best algorithms are incapable of knowing our thematic tastes or motivations. In fact, the best algorithms do not serve us at all, but the advertisers and the service providers. They follow nothing but perverse incentives, from our POV. So there's no reason for surprise when a service shovels crap into your face. You're the product.
- stametseater 4y ago
  I don't use many content recommendation systems, so maybe this isn't typical, but youtube's is very good at what it does. It knows I like videos about trains and ships, and suggests virtually nothing else to me. It doesn't need to guess at my motivation for liking trains, all it needs to do is give me train videos. I think these systems are what you make out of them. If you click trashy content, it'll give you trashy content. If you click politically edgy content, you'll get more of that. If you only click on trains, you'll only get trains. Maybe people who complain about these systems have a totally different experience than me, or maybe they don't like what they see when a content recommendation engine holds up a mirror. As for their perverse incentives and profit motive... if they're bad at anything, it's getting ad views from me.
  - NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
    I was fascinated by the concept promoted by Pandora: "digital DNA" of musical works. It was an exhaustive list of properties applied to each song they played, and it fed into their recommendation engine so that songs could be typed and matched with more stuff we wanna hear. It failed me miserably. Digital DNA, or at least its implementation on Pandora, was woefully inadequate in determining my motivation and reasons for selecting songs in a list. I created a Lenten playlist of penitential hymns, and the cardinal rule was: "NO ALLELUIA" which is not vocalized at all during the Lenten season. Well my recommendations were liberally sprinkled with joyous Easter shouts of the A-word, and my experience was ruined. I may select songs based on particular lyric themes, seasonal considerations, bands based on their particular location or affiliation; things like that. Recommendation engines just have this kind of sledgehammer that goes "Oh! You like <Heavy Metal>! Here's some more <Heavy Metal> for ya!" when my use case doesn't even care about genre, but I was looking for lyrical themes or topics. Also unlike Pandora, YouTube has one big firehose of recommendations. It is unable to segregate them within a playlist or a particular session for some purpose. The only way to isolate recommendations is by account or incognito, and that is one reason I have 3 separate personal accounts for different purposes, so that my main account's activity does not pollute the interests and recs of the special-purpose accounts.
nagonago 4y ago
I don't think algorithms have to be bad, there's still room for experimentation with algorithms that don't just "maximize for engagement". I'd love a platform where I could customize my own discovery algorithm. For example, I'd like to try out algorithms that: + Prioritize people who post less often + Prioritize people with less followers + Prioritize posts with less engagement + Let me manually choose people to prioritize/deprioritize I'm not sure any of these algorithms would actually be any good, but the point is I want the freedom to experiment. I suppose this might be theoretically possible with ActivityPub/Mastodon, but I haven't seen any implementations.
ultrasounder 4y ago
The author of this article had put up a whole post on pointers in c which to date is what I use to refresh my memory. https://boredzo.org/pointers/ https://boredzo.org/pointers/ This along with the pointers by Nick Parlante helped me get over my pointers Heebie-jeebies. http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/102/PointersAndMemory.pdf http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/102/PointersAndMemory.pdf
jongjong 4y ago
The real problem with all major media platforms is not that they suppress speech through censorship, it's that they suppress it through choosing whose speech to amplify; their amplification of certain people and ideas drown out everything else through saturation. It's hard for those who control such platforms to resist promoting their friends, acquaintances and (more generally) ideas that serve their personal interests.
- jongjong 4y ago
  I believe that there is a similar dynamic when it comes to startup funding; those who receive all the big rounds of funding drown out those which don't. A lot of our economic problems can be explained by saturation. Too much attention, too much money, too many opportunities and too much power going to a select group of people which deprive everyone else of those things.

66 points by ingve 4y ago

082349872349872 4y ago

I have been loving newsboat; RSS FTW.

wlesieutre 4y ago
I'll recommend Reeder for those in the Apple ecosystem, it syncs via iCloud vs a lot of alternatives using paid services for that

sharemywin 4y ago

"It increasingly seems to me that the best things you can do with these services—recommendation engines, algorithmic timelines, and such—is (1) don’t use them when you can help it, and (2) lie to them at every opportunity. Poison the well, and don’t drink from it."

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago

> Poison the well, and don’t drink from it. https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/ :)

at_a_remove 4y ago

[flagged]

flangola7 4y ago
No need to add unnecessary political commentary
- at_a_remove 4y ago
  It's already in there. "How do you do this without introducing them to fascism, outrage fuel, shock content, or other trash?" and "This must include anti-fascism." If it is in there, it's fair game to respond to.
madeofpalk 4y ago
> Perhaps I want what someone else considers "trash" or "shock content." Possibly, but is that what you're getting? Or is the platform trying to maximise for engagement over 'content you might be interested in'? We kind of know algorithmic feeds prioritised content that generates likes and comments - that's not necessarily or 'valuable' (for whoever's definition) content but it tends to promote "shock content" for the sake of shock in order to get engagement.
- at_a_remove 4y ago
  I remember at one point Netflix had some suggestions and I was all "Ooooh, aaah, yess!" Now I have literally no idea what they're optimizing for. It seems to be "random plus a strong suggestion of a Netflix original." Amazon Prime seems to be doing somewhat better, but now I have to wade through their branded stuff, and then Black Voices, and Still Other Voices, and then Some Other Voices, and various things that are promoted before I can get to the part where the algorithmic business kicks in. I think there's a lot of "we must override the algorithm due to Reasons" going on and that must be separated from the actual algorithmic suggestions. Conversely, I don't think you can separate engagement from "might be interested in," honestly. They're not quite synonyms but they do have a huge overlap.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago

This article is missing one important idea - yes, sure avoid algorithmic systems when we don't control the algorithm. But what I really want is an algorithmic feed option (option being important, obviously) on mastodon! If someone that I have been interacting with a lot had a popular post in the last 12 hours that I have not seen, and I have just refreshed the feed, I would love for that to be near the top. That is just one simple user story but I can imagine a wide selection of options - controllable percentage of popular posts from the rest of your server or the fediverse. Controllable percentage of posts marked important by my server admin. Controllable percentage of popular posts that people I am following have liked, even if I am not following the person. People really misdirect their grief when they say the problem is algorithms. I don't think that's really true! We all have trauma and bad memories from corporate-controlled algorithm, because that algorithm serves the needs of the corporation. Users get turned in to products to serve a for-profit system that sees us as tools to be used to extract value. And we all see those algorithms and think: "algorithms suck!" Then people make systems like mastodon with no algorithm at all - no option for one - and people bristle at the idea of an algorithm there even if it is optional. But of course it would be optional, it's mastodon! Imagine if users had a complex panel (with a few easy pre-sets to try) for various tunings to the algorithm. I genuinely believe it would make mastodon much more useful to a lot of people. I still use both twitter and mastodon and one thing that is clear is that it is very easy to see popular posts from my friends on twitter. Unfortunately there is a lot to dislike about twitter, which is why I want to see people change their thinking - what we need are algorithms we control! Open source algorithms with lots of optional tuning and adjustment and always the ability to disable it completely. There is some discussion of some of these features in the mastodon issues page. If any of you want to take a look, maybe there is some work you could help with! https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+algorithm https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%...

iudqnolq 4y ago
I had the impression that cross-server algorithmic discovery is impossible given Mastodon's fundamental architecture. That made me lose interest in the project.

vhcr 4y ago

I don't think the problem is algorithmic curation, the problem is _bad_ algorithmic curation. I personally find quite a lot of interesting content on YouTube's and Spotify's recommendations.

madeofpalk 4y ago
Specifically, it's algorithms that by design work against the user's interest in favor of the company's interest (ads, engagement bait, etc). If the developers of a social network have incentives that are more aligned with their users then it would be possible to create genuinely useful and interesting algorithmic content feeds.
- 2358452 4y ago
  Indeed, I also think we're, as a society, missing a fundamental freedom: algorithmic transparency. That's the ability, that should be a right, to know in particular for widely available or impactful systems, what is the algorithm behind their feed, from raw data sources (and also the parameters should be public). Choices are made for us that could be very bad or against or interests (for example, to promote engagement or ad consumption), and we have pretty much no way of really knowing that. Let's fight for algorithmic transparency!
alwaysbeconsing 4y ago
Seconded; also I don't know exactly what Bandcamp does but I often find good new stuff to listen to through their links too.
richardjam73 4y ago
A lot of people don't actually know what the word algorithm means or maybe the meaning itself is changing in common parlance.
Fomite 4y ago
YouTube's recommendation system is notorious in several hobby communities for a tendency to point you toward alt-right content with remarkable ease.

theden 4y ago

I think the issue is algorithmic curation uses popularity/traffic/engagement as signals over the actual content. Hence why I think outrage, politics and whatnot gets promoted more often. It leaves content that isn't popular in the dust, and causes people to modify their behaviour and content to optimise for the algorithm unfortunately—I personally think it's a broken system insofar as it's optimising for engagement rather than curation. Somewhat related, but I've been using Plex's Sonic Analysis[1] and it's been great at recommending tracks in my library (large but not spotify huge), much better than the streaming services, which often would recommend popular non-independent content over gems. It's "simple" but it works—ideally services ought to let users easily tweak how content is curated for them >The Musical Universe consists of points in N-dimensional space. But what’s important is that this allows us to see how “close” anything in your library is from anything else, where distance is based on a large number of sonic elements in the audio. 1. https://support.plex.tv/articles/sonic-analysis-music/ https://support.plex.tv/articles/sonic-analysis-music/

charcircuit 4y ago
>over the actual content The content are features to the ranking models. Recommendation systems take both what the content is and what people liked the content into account.

NoZebra120vClip 4y ago

The best algorithms are incapable of knowing our thematic tastes or motivations. In fact, the best algorithms do not serve us at all, but the advertisers and the service providers. They follow nothing but perverse incentives, from our POV. So there's no reason for surprise when a service shovels crap into your face. You're the product.

stametseater 4y ago
I don't use many content recommendation systems, so maybe this isn't typical, but youtube's is very good at what it does. It knows I like videos about trains and ships, and suggests virtually nothing else to me. It doesn't need to guess at my motivation for liking trains, all it needs to do is give me train videos. I think these systems are what you make out of them. If you click trashy content, it'll give you trashy content. If you click politically edgy content, you'll get more of that. If you only click on trains, you'll only get trains. Maybe people who complain about these systems have a totally different experience than me, or maybe they don't like what they see when a content recommendation engine holds up a mirror. As for their perverse incentives and profit motive... if they're bad at anything, it's getting ad views from me.
- NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
  I was fascinated by the concept promoted by Pandora: "digital DNA" of musical works. It was an exhaustive list of properties applied to each song they played, and it fed into their recommendation engine so that songs could be typed and matched with more stuff we wanna hear. It failed me miserably. Digital DNA, or at least its implementation on Pandora, was woefully inadequate in determining my motivation and reasons for selecting songs in a list. I created a Lenten playlist of penitential hymns, and the cardinal rule was: "NO ALLELUIA" which is not vocalized at all during the Lenten season. Well my recommendations were liberally sprinkled with joyous Easter shouts of the A-word, and my experience was ruined. I may select songs based on particular lyric themes, seasonal considerations, bands based on their particular location or affiliation; things like that. Recommendation engines just have this kind of sledgehammer that goes "Oh! You like <Heavy Metal>! Here's some more <Heavy Metal> for ya!" when my use case doesn't even care about genre, but I was looking for lyrical themes or topics. Also unlike Pandora, YouTube has one big firehose of recommendations. It is unable to segregate them within a playlist or a particular session for some purpose. The only way to isolate recommendations is by account or incognito, and that is one reason I have 3 separate personal accounts for different purposes, so that my main account's activity does not pollute the interests and recs of the special-purpose accounts.

nagonago 4y ago

I don't think algorithms have to be bad, there's still room for experimentation with algorithms that don't just "maximize for engagement". I'd love a platform where I could customize my own discovery algorithm. For example, I'd like to try out algorithms that: + Prioritize people who post less often + Prioritize people with less followers + Prioritize posts with less engagement + Let me manually choose people to prioritize/deprioritize I'm not sure any of these algorithms would actually be any good, but the point is I want the freedom to experiment. I suppose this might be theoretically possible with ActivityPub/Mastodon, but I haven't seen any implementations.

ultrasounder 4y ago

The author of this article had put up a whole post on pointers in c which to date is what I use to refresh my memory. https://boredzo.org/pointers/ https://boredzo.org/pointers/ This along with the pointers by Nick Parlante helped me get over my pointers Heebie-jeebies. http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/102/PointersAndMemory.pdf http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/102/PointersAndMemory.pdf

jongjong 4y ago

The real problem with all major media platforms is not that they suppress speech through censorship, it's that they suppress it through choosing whose speech to amplify; their amplification of certain people and ideas drown out everything else through saturation. It's hard for those who control such platforms to resist promoting their friends, acquaintances and (more generally) ideas that serve their personal interests.

jongjong 4y ago
I believe that there is a similar dynamic when it comes to startup funding; those who receive all the big rounds of funding drown out those which don't. A lot of our economic problems can be explained by saturation. Too much attention, too much money, too many opportunities and too much power going to a select group of people which deprive everyone else of those things.