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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 f

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.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  How so? If you optionally allow your server to coordinate with others, I don't see how anything like this could be impossible. Even still, some of the things I want - like giving priority to popular posts that would already be in my timeline but from several hours earlier - would be possible without any server to server coordination beyond standard federation.
  - iudqnolq 4y ago
    I thought no instance has reliable, complete, cross-fediverse search. I thought no instance shows replies from across the fediverse. I've heard the protocol is too inefficient to support receiving everything.
    - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
      > I thought no instance has reliable, complete, cross-fediverse search. This is true. > I thought no instance shows replies from across the fediverse. I am not quite sure what you mean as I see replies from many different servers in the fediverse. Perhaps there are some replies I don't see, but I suppose then I would not know this. > I've heard the protocol is too inefficient to support receiving everything. This may limit some algorithmic features, but not everything. Servers could specifically make accessible their most popular posts of the day from users who consent to this in their settings. I could choose to subscribe to this list to be optionally sprinkled in to my algorithmic feed. I don't need to see every post on the fediverse for this to work. A good heuristic would be to subscribe to popular posts from every server that hosts one person I follow, and their could be some convenience function to select those servers for me. If I find that some servers are producing posts I don't care about, I could unsubscribe from that server in a little option under the algorithmically selected post. I may only want to see popular posts from something like 20 servers, and I might only want to see the top ten most popular posts from them each day. That seems like a tractable request from my server to the ones I am following, and it does not require full fediverse search.
      - 4y ago
jefftk 4y ago
I completely agree with you. To handle this for my own situation I wrote https://www.jefftk.com/p/introducing-shrubgrazer https://www.jefftk.com/p/introducing-shrubgrazer but I'd much rather this was a feature of a real client and not my pile of hacks.

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.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
How so? If you optionally allow your server to coordinate with others, I don't see how anything like this could be impossible. Even still, some of the things I want - like giving priority to popular posts that would already be in my timeline but from several hours earlier - would be possible without any server to server coordination beyond standard federation.
- iudqnolq 4y ago
  I thought no instance has reliable, complete, cross-fediverse search. I thought no instance shows replies from across the fediverse. I've heard the protocol is too inefficient to support receiving everything.
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    > I thought no instance has reliable, complete, cross-fediverse search. This is true. > I thought no instance shows replies from across the fediverse. I am not quite sure what you mean as I see replies from many different servers in the fediverse. Perhaps there are some replies I don't see, but I suppose then I would not know this. > I've heard the protocol is too inefficient to support receiving everything. This may limit some algorithmic features, but not everything. Servers could specifically make accessible their most popular posts of the day from users who consent to this in their settings. I could choose to subscribe to this list to be optionally sprinkled in to my algorithmic feed. I don't need to see every post on the fediverse for this to work. A good heuristic would be to subscribe to popular posts from every server that hosts one person I follow, and their could be some convenience function to select those servers for me. If I find that some servers are producing posts I don't care about, I could unsubscribe from that server in a little option under the algorithmically selected post. I may only want to see popular posts from something like 20 servers, and I might only want to see the top ten most popular posts from them each day. That seems like a tractable request from my server to the ones I am following, and it does not require full fediverse search.
    - 4y ago

jefftk 4y ago

I completely agree with you. To handle this for my own situation I wrote https://www.jefftk.com/p/introducing-shrubgrazer https://www.jefftk.com/p/introducing-shrubgrazer but I'd much rather this was a feature of a real client and not my pile of hacks.