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> The point of the Fediverse is that WE DECIDE WHAT OUR OWN FEED IS... no algorithm, no "AI" deciding what we see and what we don't see.. We decide, with our own hashtags and filters, etc.
Yes but I'd argue these tools are lacking.There should be algorithms, but these algorithms should be under **our** control. We can turn them off if want, or configure them how we want.
Algorithms arent evil when your the one in control.
You will care when they start spamming everyone with commercial ads and traffic.
That said you cant reasonably expect to keep commercial interests off an open-network. So I am not suggesting there is much we can do to stop their existance. But we can, at a minimum, block the ones that spam,a nd avoid joining the ones that are commercial but maybe not spamming/advertising on the network.
@freemo @mcv @randahl @admin For me, the rules of federating are entirely content based. If an instance is full of spam, I'll block it, whether it's commercial or open. If it's got illegal content, I'll block it, whether it's commercial or open.
But I don't think I'd ever block an entire server just on the basis of being run for profit.
That works fine when servers play by the rules... a spam server is likely not to. They will just mass spam people and change their domain every hour, and it effectively becomes unblockable in any effective way.
The only reason that isnt more of a problem yet is because there isnt much commercial interest here yet. But if this place were popular that would be happening a lot and the only way to effectively stop it would be to switch to a white-list mode.
and they can't be as long as they run on a server controlled by somebody else. it follows that, in order for us to have algorithms we control for our feeds, we should have our own instances on our own servers, or we should use programs (apps) running on our own computers to gather and prioritize the posts according to our preferences.
Then everybody needs to run their own server, because everything already runs on algorithms. Mastodon and other fediverse systems too. Computers inherently run on algorithms. An algorithm is not some shadowy AI magic, it's the basis of every single thing that runs on computers.
"Show every post from every person and hashtag I follow chronologically" is also an algorithm. Or actually, that's a requirement, and the algorithm is the way the computer accomplishes that.
The problem is that on other social media, the rules and requirements of these algorithms are opaque and not designed to serve the users. I want a system that allows people to specify in more detail what kind of content they do and don't want to see in their feed, and algorithms that are more transparent about how they accomplish that.
I'm working on some ideas for this. Hopefully I'll some day get to write it.
@freemo @randahl @admin
Exactly. The problem with Twitter/Facebook/etc algorithms is that they're opaque and not under our control. I'd like to see a system where they're optional and completely under the user's control.