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   Tom Casavant (tom@tomkahe.com)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 10:18:09 JST Tom Casavant

   • Thomas 🔭🕹️

   @thomasfuchs I know people were afraid of 'The Algorithm' last year, but the problem with social algorithms is almost always that how it works is kept hidden, but that wouldn't be the case in mastodon

   • Embed this notice
     Dave Rahardja (drahardja@sfba.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 10:17:15 JST Dave Rahardja

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs I agree. I wouldn’t mind if this were a service that is separate from any particular instance. I could pay some $amount to a service to whom I grant read access to my activities, which can then recommend me posts not just from my instance, but from the entire (decent, non-creepy) Fediverse, so it can help me find accounts that I would otherwise *never* see, even on my Federated timeline.

     The service must be entirely user-funded and take no advertising money, though. Otherwise, I’d just be volunteering my data into yet another marketing meat grinder.

   • Embed this notice
     Jef Poskanzer (jef@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 10:52:51 JST Jef Poskanzer

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs Have you tried the Explore timeline? How close is that?

     I've done a little experimenting with a mixer widget to let you create your own custom timeline out of a variety of built-in ones.

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     Paul Harrison (pfh@mastodon.online)'s status on Sunday, 31-Dec-2023 00:47:16 JST Paul Harrison

     in reply to

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️
     • sabik

     @sabik @tom @thomasfuchs

     Chronological becomes overwhelming so quickly, and some people post too much. I have tried a couple of simple algorithms:

     1. Show only the latest post from everyone you're following, creating a certain level of fairness. Tried with twitter, somewhat effective, but misses important things.

     2. Just visit each person you're following, at individually tuned rates. My current "algorithm". Works on every platform! I eventually see important news, but I'm sometimes slow.

   • Embed this notice
     sabik (sabik@rants.au)'s status on Sunday, 31-Dec-2023 00:47:17 JST sabik

     in reply to

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @tom @thomasfuchs
     I suspect the problem with "the algorithm" is that you need a whole T&S team to keep it from going off the rails, either organically or in response to deliberate gaming