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Which RSS reader do you use in that case? And is it fair to say there's a middle ground between purely chronological feeds vs algorithms that reward engagement
by ahalimah 2y ago
Which RSS reader do you use in that case?
And is it fair to say there's a middle ground between purely chronological feeds vs algorithms that reward engagement/time spent on the app?
- PaulHoule 2y agoAn algorithm doesn't have to reward engagement or time spent on the app. It can reward or punish anything at all -- and that's what it is about algorithms. My feed reader (that I wrote myself) rewards things that I thumbs up and punishes things that I thumbs down.
- bluebarbet 2y agoIs this mysterious feed reader one that you made yourself? I agree about the need to have some means of filtering. This is a major weakness of RSS, alongside onboarding and discovery. Algorithms serve the purpose of filtering well. The problem is their opacity.
- PaulHoule 2y agoWhat people are calling an "algorithm" is really a heuristic. In the public discourse over "algorithms", the definition seems to be "something that maximizes your (time on site|outrage|clicking)" and not the real definition In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm (/ˈælɡərɪðəm/ ⓘ) is a finite sequence of mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. [1] By that definition any well-defined process that creates your feed (sorting chronologically, alphabetically) is an "algorithm"; in the machine learning age it is easy to make an algorithm that selects for anything at all, except for the capital-T Truth. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm