#BlueSky and #Fediverse developers could learn a lot from each other: right now it feels like they could learn a lot from here on moderation…but seeing their new “anyone can create and use and share their own algorithm” - that’s great and Fedi should immediately learn from, implement and improve on that idea…
@tchambers FWIW, it seems rather feasible to play with personal feed algorithms against the streaming API of a Mastodon instance.
That'll repeatedly bash into the "don't index what I toot" sentiment, though.
@lmorchard @tchambers You could do this in the client. This should counter those arguments.
@mike @tchambers Even in the client, folks still object to indexing & processing of posts without explicit consent.
Personally, I’m coming to an opinion that if you stick a message in a bottle and toss it into a sea designed to replicate bottled messages, you’ve consented to what folks do with bottles that wash up on their shore. But, there is angry disagreement with this notion.
@lmorchard @mike @tchambers This discussion made me think of the following discussion between @MartinEscardo, @johncarlosbaez, and others about how mastodon sometimes seems to fail to surface content to those interested in seeing it (in this case specifically on category theory).
https://mathstodon.xyz/@MartinEscardo/110396681404988001
I do think this is basically due to algorithm phobia.
@johncarlosbaez @lmorchard @mike @tchambers @MartinEscardo with feeds being primarily driven by chronology, I think it's just too easy to miss things if you follow more than a few people. There are potentially ways to cope with that somewhat, using lists and hashtags, but I don't think you'll ever get enough people to do that consistently to promote conversation the way one might like.
Based on past experience on social media, people are rightly apprehensive about algorithms, but perhaps they have perhaps over-corrected. It seems plausible that transparent algorithms under the control of users themselves could be a good thing. Otherwise we are effectively stuck using a very poor algorithm to decide what we see.
@internic @lmorchard @mike @tchambers @MartinEscardo - yes, I'm afraid that if Twitter is an "echo chamber", then Mastodon, or at least Mathstodon, is an anechoic chamber.