Cethin comments on how did you make the switch from reddit to lemmy.. i'm trying to myself but struggling to ngl

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 20 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I hate this phrase. There are several algorithms. There's new, hot, rising, etc. There's no company manipulating content discovery. That's the difference. Algorithms are great. For-profit companies with an incentive to control content is bad.

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[–] TheMadCodger@piefed.social 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In the Lemmy word, sure. I was referring to Mastodon where there is no hot or rising. It's just based off of who you're following and when you check. Hence likes doing nothing but informing the poster of your appreciation.

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[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I guess fair enough, though every other federated site I know of uses some other algorithm, and you seem to have been talking about the fediverse in general, not Mastodon, except for the example. Still, Mastodon's sort is still an algorithm. You can't display anything without an algorithm. That word just means a set of rules to complete a task. Mastodon uses one that only uses who you're following and time to decide what to display.

Algorithms aren't the issue. We can have sophisticated algorithms that help users find the content they want. That's great. It's when there is an incentive, and ability, to influence the algorithm by the platform controllers when there's an issue. The fediverse solves this not by ditching algorithms, but by having no singular controller.

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[–] bradboimler@lemmy.world 1 point 1 year ago

On the web client, if you go to Trending, you will see "hot" posts (I have no idea how they're ranked) by folks you're not following. The official Android client has this too. It's where I spend most of my Mastodon time.

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